I tried to leave a comment on someone’s blog the other day and the Capcha window popped up. Obviously this triggered an immediate urge to KILL but I had to soldier on, because what I’d just said was super brilliant and the internet might implode without my insight. Only problem was this was a new scourge of capcha. It wanted me to identify photos of sandwiches:
I immediately began to panic. What if I can’t tell which one is a sandwich? It sounds stupid but what is a sandwich really? I had one the other day that had an entire baby lamb skewered inside of it plus bean sprouts and some repurposed newspaper clippings from Mumbai. I’ve also had sandwiches that were nothing more than day old bread with Nutella slathered inside. It took me two guesses but I finally got the capcha right and was told I’m not a robot. That’s a relief.
There’s something about trying to say “yes, this” and “no, not that” in the moment makes me panic. The only thing I can properly identify is an asshole. But you know what’s even worse?
Trying to unlock a door while someone is watching: I’ll always inevitably put the key in upside down or turn it the wrong way or not even be able to get it in the hole—even when I’m totally sober. *insert obligatory drunk sex joke*
This is kind of like when you go to plug in a USB cord. It’s best to go ahead and accept defeat before you even try. Sure, there’s a 50% chance you’re going to get it right—but then you second guess yourself based on those odds and (if you’re me) score a 99% fail rate.
Only thing worse than that is when Alex is in the passenger seat of my car. I’ve driven across the US on more than one occasion, braving traffic jams in places like Boston and New York City. But somehow the seemingly simple task of taking my turn at a 4-way stop sign or trying to park against a curb becomes monumentally difficult under his watchful eye/while he’s sitting there reading an article on his phone about ancient Babylonia or something.
But wait. There IS something worse: Trying to remove your shoes at airport security. I overly scrutinize my every action but it never seems to help. I’m so determined to not be the weakest in the chain or to hold up the line that I shuffle along, watching everyone else remove their belts, thinking “should I remove my shoes now? Or now? Maybe now?”
If you wait too long, you’ll be ripping them off and flinging them haphazardly while everyone behind you rolls their eyes and sighs loudly. BUT if you take them off too soon you’ll feel like a fool, shuffling along on the sides of your feet, trying not to catch a fungus while wondering why you didn’t remember—for the millionth time– to bring a pair of socks for this exact reason. But then you know there’s no way you could handle the multi-step process of removing your sandals and putting on socks while trying not to leave your baggage unattended or spill your bag of snacks.
Oh but then there’s the traffic after a firework show… But I’m not ready to talk about it. Traveling alone around the world? No problem. Having to testify against an abusive ex? Bring it on. Trying to wrap a present while someone else is watching, scrutinizing your every uneven flap and fingerprint-y piece of tape? Absolute panic.
What routine things make YOU panic? Do you ever overthink a seemingly simple process? Is there anything that triggers your immediate “KILL” instinct?
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All of these! LOL I hate it when someone asks for my phone number and I come up with….nothing. Duh! 🙂
Yessss. Or people are like “your name?” and my first and immediate response is “Ummm…”
Four-way stops are the devil. There is no possible way to get them right.
You just have to kind of look around at everyone then put your foot on the pedal like “I’m going I’m going please don’t hit me thanks sorry.”
When we were going over 4-way stops in driver’s ed, one kid asked the instructor what you’re supposed to do in the unlikely event that all four cars get there at exactly the same time. The instructor just laughed and said, “Trust me, SOMEONE WILL GO.”
Wise words!
I actually learned the “right” way to do a four-way stop but soon discovered it was futile because, chances are, 3 out of the 4 people at that stop don’t know. So my tried and true method is now something like….you…no…me? No…you? Okay…so…yeah…I’m just gonna…I’m going now.
I was taught that it was the person to the right who goes first but WHAT DOES THAT MEAN if all four people are there?! Endless waiting. End of universe.
And people complain that our town has too many roundabouts. No thank you, malcontents; I like them roundabouts.
But see also Aussa’s post about crazy ex-boss and roundabouts. Me thinks she’d do worse in a 4-way stop!
When I started this job, I typed my network password in wrong three times and locked myself out. While my new boss watched. I am the computer programmer.
Hahaha!!! That is amazing.
Yeah there are things that cause and effect certain things. But we’ll be here a while listing them all.
I love you and your blog. I die at this. All these things just exist to wreck my almost good mood and yours. too.
I’m glad I’m not alone. Love how the interwebs enable us to bond over our neuroses 😉
i cannot answer my phone in the presence of anyone else. for some reason, i take on a faux european accent, my voice switches octaves and i wave my hands willy nilly. the person with me will usually ask if i’m okay –
Same! I HAAAATE taking or making a call when anyone else is around. Alex has to do all our call-making. And it’s not like I have anything to hide… its just awkward. I am terrified of ever having a job where I work in a cubicle.
I can BBQ a piece of steak like an absolute champ, EXCEPT for when the guy I’m dating is there, watching. It’s either charred on the outside and still raw on the inside or some how, charred overcooked on the inside and raw on the outside. Not sure how that even works.
Right?! Alex does almost all of our cooking but the few times I’ll start to do something myself I ALWAYS mess it up. Maybe I always mess it up even when he’s not there, I just have the opportunity to fix my mistakes without him ever knowing. Hmmmm
Just found your blog yesterday… already LOVE YOU. And coincidentally I’m in Loveland, CO (No, not the ski resort.) ((If you don’t understand, you will eventually.)) Anyway, I came here to say I can NEVER get my money/card back into my wallet and subsequently back into my purse in a normal amount of time when the person behind me at checkout keeps inching closer and closer to me. I have been known to utter a small stress squeak just as they are about to shove me out of their way in disgust.
Yessssss. I think I actually blogged about this at some point– which I’d totally forgotten about until now. I HATE paying cash because then they pile the bills and coins on top of the receipt and put it in your hand. I’m just like “what am I supposed to do with this?!” so I shove it in wherever I can find. The horrors.
And! Loveland. I can’t actually say *where* it is in relation to me but I do know it’s in Colorado 😉
Also, there seem to be two Berthouds. One is right by Loveland, and the other is a mountain pass. Can no one come up with new names? We apparently just have to reuse them. I’m sure Boulder is behind this with some overzealous recycle movement.
Haha!
I am a rather outgoing person, but put me in certain social situations, and I freeze…such as, a get together with people you worked out with for months but don’t really know ’cause that happened recently. Basically, anything that makes me feel awkward falls in this category. I HATE FEELING AWKWARD. 🙂
I freeze too. Sometimes I feel like I go temporarily autistic or something– and I’m not meaning that in an insulting way or to make light of it. Like, in a situation where I don’t know what to do or how to respond I will almost shut down completely and not acknowledge that there is another human or group of humans next to me, waiting for a response. It’s like I just socially hibernate and wait for them to go away.
Dialing phone numbers. It has been a recurring nightmare of mine since childhood, and frequently manifests in real life.
That’s a good one! And by good one I mean bad one. What an awful sounding nightmare– like trying to scream but no sound comes out. Yeesh.
I’m not even sure what Capcha is, but if it makes it that hard to comment I’ll go away again. Sod, life’s too short
I’m jealous that you’ve lived this long without suffering from Capcha.
I’m a dolt, and a technodunce. If I don’t understand it, I don’t use it. Simple
The complicated Capcha thing makes me crazy. And, I have to say, I had a moment of panic at the sandwich question, too. What if they put up a photo of those little finger sandwiches. What are those, canapes? Would they qualify?
Right?! You totally get me.
Trying to do anything on a computer, like look something up on the internet, or type an email, when someone is looking over your shoulder – you just keep clicking on the wrong things, mistyping things, opening the wrong files etc.
The other one that sends me into a panic is if I’m asked for my children’s dates of birth by anybody official, like for a medical thing or whatever, I know their dates of birth perfectly well but when I’m put on the spot I panic that if I’m not able to reel them off seamlessly, and without looking like I’m having to think about it at all, then they will assume that either they aren’t my children and I have in fact kidnapped them, or that I’m lying about their details. Thankfully now they are teenagers they can give out their own dates of birth if they’re there, it’s quite a relief.
Having someone watch over your shoulder is the worst. Suddenly you’re blind to obvious things like “File” and “Preferences” and how to make an _underscore_.
Hilarious about the kids. I feel like I can’t remember my own name and birthdate sometimes and people will assume I’m lying. Maybe they’ll just assume I’ve kidnapped myself.
I can usually take my morning meds without incident. I just toss the whole smorgasbord of pills in my mouth and wash them down with water. Except when my husband is watching, or I think he might be watching out of the corner of his eye while he butters his toast – then I do my usual toss, miss my mouth and they end up flying all over the kitchen. So we end up scrambling to find them all before one of our cats eats one and ends up having, say, a psychotic break from one of the meds I take meds for various and sundry reasons. [I thought sundry meant something along the lines of weird, off-kilter, somewhat distasteful – turns out it only means various. Damn]
I think of “sundry” as relating to things that are slightly deranged too. Hmm.. What a disappointment. And there’s another one! When you’re about to type a word you KNOW you know but you still have to compulsively look it up.
Are there things that DON”T? Here they are in incomplete form. (Also if you ever want to suck all of the enjoyment out of a BBQ ask people if they think a hot dog is a sandwich.)
1. Parking garages
2. Voice mail
3. Movies where men wear skirts and pay for things out of pouches
4. Trying to do a high kick in a short skirt in sixth grade (that one might be too particular)
5. Hugs. I hate hugs.
1. I can NEVER find my car in a parking garage. I will usually take a photo of the level and send it to Alex.
2. JUST NO
3. Whaaaaat. Don’t you like Game of Thrones?!
4. If you were successful at this, they would think you were trying to flash your vulva at them, so you were actually spared.
5. I am not a hugger either!!!! And we totally hugged. We both thought the other required a hug. Ah.
I’m not the only one! And by the way, I get stopped by airport security every time I fly. It makes me wonder if I did something illegal and forgot. I’d totally be that person who confesses to something she didn’t do.
I ALWAYS get stopped by them too. It’s like they can see the mischief in our eyes or something (even though I’m pretty sure my eyes are lifeless and despairing at the airport). They always have to have a woman pat me down: “Okay, I’m going to touch you here. Now here.” So far, they haven’t found anything. YET.
I can never figure out the tip while the pizza guy is watching me.
Same here. I always end up giving some astronomical amount while questioning whether I’m stingy. Then I’m like “hmmm that was 70%.”
I just had quite the shoe experience at airport security on the way back from Japan. They gave me a pair of heavy-duty Croc-esque sandals to wear so I wouldn’t have to walk through in my socks, which was considerate and polite and all like you’d expect Japan to be, but actually just made things worse because they were like a men’s size 14, so in between trying to get my shoes off and back on gracefully I had to shuffle through the metal detector with these massive clunky rubber boats on my feet.
I’m glad they didn’t try to ask me anything as I went through, because at that moment 100% of my mental faculties were devoted to the challenge of not tripping and falling on my face. One distraction and I guarantee I would’ve hit the deck.
Hahaha that’s fascinating that they provide shoes like that. Sounds like a nightmare though, if they were to try to do it in the US. We are not great at detailed logistics. Or manners.
I am a fabulous speller. Right up until someone asks me to spell something. Then I’m all “g-e-n-i-o-u-s”? Ugh.
Oh yeah– if someone is watching me type it’s like “their is somehyinh round with me.”
I like the picture capchas better than the old distorted letters capchas, which I never was able to reliably master. When I was having my eyeball problems, whenever I encountered one of those I just wasn’t able to comment. Which isn’t the end of the world, but quite annoying anyway.
Back when I used to race motorcycles, there was “Heyburger’s law” which stated that the likelihood of crashing was equal to the square of the people watching, multiplied by the number of protective gear items one has neglected to have worn…
Yeah the letter one’s are definitely worse– because a one looks like an “I” and sometimes a “J” and then there are these random diagonal letters and I’m like “do those count? Is this real life?”
Heyburger’s law sounds like one of the core governing principles of my existence.
Thanks to captcha I know definitively that I am a robot. What’s so bad about that? 😉
I see red when I see pop-up ads (regardless of what colour they are). It doesn’t matter how much I’m enjoying what I read before that, if a pop-up ad assails me while I’m on your site, I am OUT.
If I can click the X and make it go away, then I can deal. I think I actually have popups on the mobile version of this site… hopefully not the freezing kind though.
The thing that makes me CRAZY is when you’re scrolling and you have to hit next but the page jumps at just the right time to make you click on an ad. SO MUCH KILL.
Opening a DVD. Makes me stabby every time. You get through the stupid plastic and then they’ve taped all the edges in kryptonite. Thank the gods for my Apple TV. It’s probably saved someone’s life.
Or a CD! Yes! You pull out a steak knife and shave off part of your finger in the process.
Hahaha. 🙂
Any kind of technology! I can screw it up to the point where IT people gaze in wonder and utter, “I’ve never seen this before!” There’s probably a website.
Some technology kills me. Like the server that hosts this blog. I can’t even talk about it. Because I literally don’t understand the words I would need in order to talk about it.
The only thing that activates my kill mode is anything to deal with protecting my kids. Other than that I don’t get excited about much. I think a lot but I don’t really overthink. I just think in every possible direction at once so I can react accordingly when something happens.
Protecting kids is a legitimate thing to devote thought to. I’m sure I will find a way to go completely psycho on that one too though.
My address…after being here 6 months, I still have to think a minute and can’t remember if it’s 2456 or 2546…and then that makes me question my zip code…and then because I’m now confused, I just go get a piece of mail so I’m not confused anymore…
Haha! I could NEVER remember my employee ID at my last job. I always switched the 5 and 7 and had developed two legit “memory triggers” that would convince me it was either of them at different times. Had to keep a sticky note on my desk. So legit, so secure.
Performance anxiety combined with a good ol dose of stage fright……….That’s me as well. I can totally relate.
OMG stage fright. I am the worst.
Don’t remove your shoes too early. They might think you’re preparing to attack. With whatever you have in your shoes.
Good tip!
I think I just got $150 worth of therapy for free 🙂 But, I did give up saying, “Hey everybody, watch this!”
Yeah, right.
YESSSS come here for the therapy!!!!
*waits to get sued*
What trip me up is selecting those identity questions banks have to verify your identity when you forget your password. These aren’t unambiguous questions with only one possible answer that very few people would likely know (e.g., “What city were you born in?” or “What was your maternal grandmother’s middle name?”) but ones that could change. For example, “What is your favorite model of car?” Should I select one that I like now but may change between now & when I need to answer this question? Pick some humorously stupid choice to baffle anyone from guessing, & hope I remember it five years down the road? Or maybe they want me to be hyperspecific — not just “Mustang” or “’67 Mustang”, but “Shelby Cobra Mustang”? And what if I can’t remember how to spell it — or I accidentally misspell it when I type in the answer the first time?
I know!!!! I’ve made up my own random bullshit answers to all those questions so I know no one would ever guess them. But when I come across a set of questions I absolutely CANT answer, I’m at a loss. Favorite sports team? WTF?
I hate it when people ask me to take a picture. Suddenly I no longer know how to use my phone (or someone else’s) and panic while people are standing there with their smiles fading. Also, I’m too old to see up close without reading glasses, so I either fumble through my purse for them or just take the picture and act surprised if it comes out blurry. I just pretend I can see pictures on other people’s phones, too, and try my best to utter an appropriate response.
Hahahahahahaha that’s amazing, I love it. Sort of like when you can’t understand what someone is saying, even after you’ve asked “what?” so you just go “oohh ahh haha yeah” and try to match their tone and facial expression.
Hmmmm Driving along and seeing the police. I’m pretty good at staying on the speed limit but I always feel guilty. Big hot flash will happen!
It’s interesting how universal a reaction this is– I remember when I was in elementary school and the teacher would turn around to see who was talking while we were in line in the hallway and I ALWAYS felt guilty even though I wasn’t talking. Wonder what it means…. *puts on Freud hat*
Sometimes I’ll be talking and then I realize I’m babbling. But even though my brain is understanding that I’m babbling, I can’t stop. It’s like watching a train wreck in slow motion and being helpless to do anything about it. Not only will I keep babbling, but then I get frantic that the person I’m babbling to will realize that I’m now saying totally inane things and will judge me. So do I stop at that point? No – I continue, even faster, praying that something clever or witty will come out of my mouth. The worst is when I can see in their eyes that they are 1) totally bored with me or 2) a little bit scared of me. And still…I keep babbling.
See, I usually have the opposite problem. Like, I will just completely not speak. It’s not even stage fright. It’s like I completely forget that this is a human and I should engage with it. I think it’s a result of spending way too much time alone.
Also, you have such an interesting voice that I could never hear it as babbling.
Typing ANYTHING with someone standing behind me. It always becomes and ordeal and I can touch type!
Yep. Or trying to navigate to something on your computer. You suddenly forget where you keep your files or how to find the settings of a program you use all the time.
I drive an 18 foot long pickup truck. I can parallel park her in the tightest of spots, unless my husband happens to be sitting in the passenger seat. At that point for some reason any ability I ever had to parallel park completely deserts me. The spot could be large enough for a semi and I will I wind up backing in and pulling out and backing in and pulling back out for about 10 minutes before I give up in frustration, throw it in park and say “I can feel you judging me! Just park it yourself” and get out and storm away. I tend to be a little dramatic.
I read this comment this morning on my phone (while in bed far too late) and was laughing. It’s so freaking true. I mean– this same phenom extends to the most basic shit too. Like untying a bread sack.