As we walked to the street location he had scouted out, we started talking about the dangers of crossing downtown streets. We swapped eyewitness accounts of our close encounters with the mechanized kind and some of the most gruesome hit-and-runs in cinematic history. He said, “Yeah, I remember when I saw Kermit get run over in Muppets take Manhattan. I was pretty upset.� I laughed it off, thinking nothing of it, just a pop reference, a mere joke, and on we went to the business at hand.

The following day at lunch, I spoke with my friend asking her how the pictures turned out. Afterwards, she told me that her husband had told her about our conversation and I mentioned to her the Kermit the Frog bit. “No he didn’t! I told him not to act weird.� As she started laughing, I was a bit puzzled as it really wasn’t that weird. She went on, “He tends to talk about random esoteric topics. That’s how he gets when he’s shy.�

I could empathize. I am fairly reserved and shy. But when put in a similar situation, I rattle on nonsensically and hope and pray that some miraculous intervention occurs to deliver me from my impending social disgrace. (I remember one particular blind date I thought I had blown due to my sudden loquaciousness. Fortunately, he found my verbosity endearing and called me for a second date.)

The awkwardness of these social situations seems to force us to overcompensate for our silence, putting ourselves out there on a precarious ledge. In our attempt to bridge the gap between ourselves and others, we may accidentally drive them further away, repelled by our verbal vomit. Our reserved nature is often misinterpreted as aloofness or disdain. Nothing could be further from the truth. Sometimes it just takes a while for us to get the lay of the land. We want to establish a comfort zone; we may be hesitant to take a risk because we may be afraid of saying the wrong thing or completely alienate ourselves.

Sometimes, we just need to get over ourselves and realize that the crazy things that come out of your mouth are just a fraction of what you are.