An Introvert Lexicon

Twelve new words for our nameless things

Photo by Amador Loureiro on Unsplash

For all of us who have been there, done that, and got the t-shirt but have never been able to give these familiar monsters a name:

• Boss-butting — When someone makes a deliberate attempt to “get to know you better,” asking intrusive questions about your personal life that feel like a hot poker up your butt, but you can’t get escape or tell them where to shove it because they’re your new boss.
• Monday-Friday reports — the mandatory reports on your weekend plans and activities demanded by everyone you see on Mondays and Fridays, that require lies and evasions to stave off confusion, accusations of “weirdness,” and further probing interrogations — because “normal” people at least try to go out and socialize.
• Walk-jacking — when you’re blissfully ambling along your way then someone you know joins you, high-jacking your walk, shoving all your peaceful musings out of your head, and forcing you to engage in awkward small talk all the way to your destination.
• Chaos volcano — That moment after you have just enjoyed a play, a lecture, or a quiet church service when it ends, and suddenly the whole room stands up and erupts into a roar of aimless talking, making you feel conspicuous as you try to navigate around the mingling lava pools to find the door.
• Arms-Gauntlet — When you arrive at a family event and everyone is coming at you with out-stretched arms and wagging fingers, demanding a hug, and forcing you to fight off an instinct to just run away.

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• Demon-Doc — The compassionate “healer” who diagnoses your silence as “sadness” and will not stop tormenting you until they “put a smile on your face” or get you to “tell me what’s bothering you.”
• Fort Knox store — A retail establishment, most often small and locally-owned, that is heavily patrolled by “friendly” staff who refuse to let you browse in peace, shadowing you like a watchdog and barking intrusive questions at you in a push to “bond” with you — until you flee for your life empty-handed.
• Spring plank-walk — A high school torture ritual that drags kids like us out over a social sea storm, pushing you at spear-point to choose between the horrors of going to “the prom” or facing the raging crowd back on the boat, who are salivating to brand you as such a pitiful, pathetic loser that adults whisper about “getting you counseling.”
• Ghostmaker — A person who seeks you out for meaningful conversations at school or at work but pretends you’re invisible as soon as their extroverted friends show up.
• Hermit branding iron — The guidance counselor’s test that proposes to match your personality to compatible careers, producing a diagnosis that you will need to find work as a hermit on a mountain top and prompting sympathetic looks and concerned whispering from all the adults in your life.
• Belladonnadvice — The plethora of advice for introverts suggesting that our lives would be easier in this extroverted society if we just “calmly explain” ourselves to every clueless extrovert we encounter— best illustrated by rainbows, bunny smiles, berry-flavored Kool-Aid, full-body convulsions, and projectile vomiting.
• Deludavert — An extrovert who suddenly realizes they are “actually an introvert” and can’t stop telling everyone all about it.