It's All About Me
"Mind if I sit at the other end of your table?" a voice interrupted my tap-tap-tapping on my laptop computer at my neighborhood coffee shop yesterday. I was at the Big Table in the corner, using the only unoccupied outlet (my battery's currently dead) and working furiously on a freelance project due first thing the next morning. It being a big table and me being a relatively small person, I replied a polite, "Sure."
The woman, a law student I deduced by glancing at the titles of the big books she plunked down, smiled and took up residency near my work space. A little too near my work space, in my opinion. I briskly moved my empty plate and book out of her way. Then a friend of hers from across the coffee shop came over to ask a question about some sort of legal matter. After she explained the legalese and the quiet resumed, she answered her cell phone and proceeded to have a nice little chat with a long-lost friend named Lucy.
Despite my hey-I'm-trying-to-work-here glances (read: menacing glares), the law student didn't get it — or didn't care that she was interrupting my precious productivity. Finally I harrumphed, packed up my laptop, and headed home. Okay, so I needed to leave anyway, but the heavy sigh was for affect. To communicate that I was Not Happy and that I did in fact mind — I minded very much her sitting at the other end of my table and interrupting my little self-ordered world.
I realize now how petty this all sounds. I also realize that it's just the latest in a string of instances that has forced me to face my newest singleness side-effect: It's-all-about-me syndrome. In the past year of living on my own for the first time, I've discovered there's a down side to being able to listen to loud music whenever I want to, wash (or not wash) the dishes however I want to, sing and dance spontaneously, eat off my coffee table while seated on the floor watching Friends reruns on TV, and decorate, entertain, clean, and pretty much run my home in any way that suits me — and me alone. Somewhere in all this singleness freedom, I've lost some of my capacity to Play Well With Others.
I recognize this lost skill when I'm on a plane and have to switch seats to accommodate a far-flung family wanting to sit together. At home I can sit wherever I want and there's no one there to make me move. When I go home to visit my family, it takes 5 adults 20 minutes to figure out where to eat dinner. When it's just me, dinner plans usually require only a quick glance in my fridge, peek in my wallet, or check of my current food mood. When I'm out with friends who have small children at home, they often have to get home early so their babysitter can go home. In stark contrast, I could stay out all night (if I had that kind of energy) and no one would notice.
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