March 7, 2005
As all of you know, I'm what you could call "socially inept". Well, you could if you were feeling kind. I don't really want to know how you'd describe me if you were mad at me over something.
I also like to joke around with people and bust on them a bit. In a weird way it's how I show someone I think they're OK -- I like them enough to treat them like shit. When someone doesn't get the joke, sometimes I go so far as to blame them. After all, they should have known I was only screwing around, right?
Ignoring for the moment the times when I truly do step over the line and have to force myself to apologize later (that's another entry, and one I hope I don't have to do for a while), this causes some problems. It turns out that, as much as I expect everyone else to know when I'm only kidding, I'm lousy at figuring out when someone else is messing with me.
If it were just over IM I may be able to dodge some criticism: Text is notoriously poor at conveying tone of voice. This is why anyone who's ever gotten an IM from me has seen the thing littered with so many smilies that it looks like AOL exploded.
But it's not just online; I do it in real-life conversations, too. Even when someone uses the exact same tone I would have, I get fooled. So there I am getting offended because someone's doing the exact same damn thing I would have done if our roles were reversed.
For someone who expects everyone else to have a sense of humor, it seems like mine's lacking sometimes.
