I was having a casual conversation with one of my female friends recently during which she said a single word that triggered a rush of embarrassing memories into my mind’s eye. I had to take a break in the middle of a sentence, press my fingers against my temples and allow them to pass through before I could engage in conversation again. She asked me what I was doing, and I didn’t know how to explain myself. All I said in response was “bad thoughts”.
This has been happening more and more lately, and it’s those same memories that rush to the forefront of my mind when I close my eyes to sleep at night. I’m being constantly beaten down by the flood of recollections of my past: mishandled social interactions, awful decisions and the thought of who I once was. It makes me want to slam my head against a wall until I black out. I need a place to express myself, so forgive me for using this place like a confessional booth at a church. I’m now going to narrate an instance that’s burdened my soul for a long time, in the hopes that it will alleviate my mind in some way:
There was an inter-class competition in my school organized by the student council. It was related to the business stream, and there would be 10 rounds for each of the different areas of commerce like Management, Entrepreneurship, Finance, Marketing etc. This competition that I signed up for, because I thought it would look good in my resume, was a breeding ground for some of the most embarrassing memories of my life.
Let me state right off the bat that I was in over my head. I never planned on winning. My goal was simply to participate regardless of my general incompetence and immaturity. Before the rounds for the ‘management’ part of the competition began, we were asked to take a general aptitude test, the point of which I thought was to straight away eliminate unfit candidates. It was a mixture of verbal, math, personality and logic questions. After a certain point in the process of writing the test, I realized that my chances of getting to participate are slim to none. So I started to do one of my favorite things to do: self-sabotage.
I don’t know why my juvenile brain works this way, but when I know that something isn’t going well, I like to self- sabotage and make things worse for myself. It’s basically my way of extracting a little bit of fun out of a hopeless situation. After I answered all the questions that I thought I knew the answer to, I filled the rest of the paper with joke responses and wacky doodles. I submitted my answer sheet, and that was that. I just thought I’d never have to think about it again.
After a while, I got to know that I was selected for the first round of ‘management’ which was supposed to be a personal interview. I couldn’t believe it, but I assumed my non-joke-responses is what got my foot in the door. I also assumed that the interview would be something simple, like one where they ask me basic questions about my background, academics or accomplishments. That was generally my experience with student council interviews up until that point.
On the day of my interview, when I walked in and sat in front of the six interviewers (who were just my seniors in the last year of their undergraduate degree), much to my horror, they took out the answer sheet of the test I wrote. I immediately realized at that moment that the whole point of the interview would be to follow-up on the answers that I gave on the test that I thought would never come back to bite me. Go figure.
Now I don’t even know how to begin describing the intense stupidity of the next couple of minutes. Bear with me, because we’re entering optimum levels of cringe.
One of the first questions they asked me was about my response to a questions that asked “What movie title best describes who you’ll become in the future?” My answer that I wrote for this was “The 40-Year-Old Virgin”, which wasn’t even funny. It’s the most obvious joke that anyone could’ve made. I probably stopped thinking at that point during the exam and was writing whatever that popped in my head. The interviewers then asked me why I wrote that as my response.
The obvious thing to do would have been just to claim that it was a joke. But that’s not what I did. I started to explain how I’m someone who’s unsuccessful with women. I’d like to remind you that this is happening in front of a group students who are only two years older than me.
I was speaking at length, in a professional interview, about how I’ve never been good at interacting with members of the opposite gender.
But it gets worse…
They then proceeded to one of the next questions that asked something like – “which would reach the ground faster when dropped, an egg or a feather?” I don’t remember what I wrote as the answer, but I remember it was correct because I’ve heard that question before. Unfortunately, I also drew an unsolicited illustration of an egg and a feather dropping to amuse myself. When they pointed it out to me, I told them that I just did that to make whoever was reading the paper laugh. They proceeded to explain to me how unfunny I was.
They then asked me if I had any extra-curricular achievements. I mentioned that I had a green belt in Karate (which isn’t impressive at all, but I assumed they wouldn’t know that). They then asked me why I didn’t master the sport. I did a very poor job of explaining how Karate is more comparable to a choreographed dance than anything that would be practical in a self-defense situation. In the middle of this explanation, I got up from my seat and did a Kata pose and told them “I can’t do this in the middle of a fight, can I?” It’s only after I struck the pose that I realize that these people didn’t know what I was showing them. They didn’t know what a Kata was. All they saw was me inexplicably getting up from my seat in the middle of a conversation and striking a pose for no good reason. The female interviewer right in front of me had this bewildered expression on her face that screamed “why did you just do that?”.
To be clear, I was so nervous that I wasn’t even talking straight. It wasn’t so much “talking” as I was “incoherently mumbling to myself”. Don’t believe for a moment that I was speaking in full sentences at any point in this interview.
You know what the best part was? The crème de la crème? At some point in this interview, I thought that I should become more assertive and confident. Maybe I should channel someone I know. So I started scanning my brain for people who I thought were confident, which lead me to thinking about public speakers. Their whole job is to speak confidently in front of a large crowd. But I didn’t know any public speakers, so what’s the closest equivalent that I do know? Stand-up comedians. Who’s a stand-up comedian that I like? Bill Burr.
Yup. Bill Burr. Out of all people.
At some random point in the interview, I started to emulate Bill Burr’s mannerisms, style of speaking and body language.
It took me way too long to snap out of it and act like myself again. After the interview concluded and I exited the room, I could very clearly hear laughing and one of them saying “What was that!?” I decided to just go home straight away and cry into a pillow.
This post ended up being way longer than it had to be. I have more memories to recount, but I’ll save them for another day and another post. For now, I’ll end it here, and I pray that God absolves me of my cringe.