I talk with my hands!

Self-knowledge is not a fun thing. You carry around a picture of who you are and that makes you vulnerable to all sorts of deflations. It was a relatively minor one that when Raven sent me a picture of me talking to someone at Ignite Portland it looks, as Raven said, like I’m doing some “This big” thing with my hands. And as unsettling as it is to have this picture up when I was completely unaware of it being taken, I couldn’t remember that gesture at all. Which killed Raven, “But you always talk with your hands! It is one of your things!”
“No, I don’t!”
“Totally do.”
“Talking to you right here, right now, not using my hands.”
“Well, you do it when you’re in a new situation, talking to someone you don’t know well, it’s like how you keep your thoughts moving.”

I find this completely mortifying.

So much so that I’ve waited some two weeks after the fact to post about it. And while I suspect I am going to be even a tad more self-conscious the next attempt I make to push my introvert comfort zone about what I am doing with my hands while talking, I am apparently not so completely dorky that he refuses to be associated with me, I mean, he still introduces me to the cool people he knows (I think!)

I do sometimes miss the stage in my life when a cigarette gave me something to do with my hands, or (in the post-cigarette stage) a baby strapped to my chest that I could pat and rock. Not that that’s a good reason to go back to either of those two stages. Maybe I’ll have to take up knitting.

Posted by Mara Collins on Nov 7, 2007 | 9 comments

9 Comments

  1. sarah gilbert
    Nov 8, 2007

    having been the one to whom you were talking in that photo, I can promise that I didn’t notice it at all. i think we’re all wrapped up in how other people are perceiving us without any energy to expend on observing the flaws of those around us.

    it’s funny that i posted the video of my presentation last night, and was mortified that I was rocking maniacally back and forth for the first three minutes…

  2. Audrey
    Nov 8, 2007

    You should totally take up knitting. :)

  3. Dawn
    Nov 8, 2007

    I’m also guilty of talking with my hands. I have way too many pictures of me that look like this: http://farm1.static.flickr.com/210/495480243_9c1e33d309.jpg

    I’ve given up fighting it :-)

  4. unreliable narrator
    Nov 11, 2007

    And here’s me, moving my hands around wildly as I’m talking to you RIGHT NOW….oh, oh wait. That’s *typing*. Never mind. ;o)

  5. unreliable narrator
    Nov 11, 2007

    PS so wallet was recovered from burgerville??

  6. blue milk
    Nov 15, 2007

    Hahaha. You were brave to post about something that you feel so self-concious about. The funniest thing about that photo is that it looks like you’re not talking to anyone, just talking very animatedly.. to yourself. Anyway, I don’t think talking with your hands is silly or dorky at all.

  7. Ina
    Nov 17, 2007

    Could it be the Italian from all the time you spent as a baby with Anne Marie? Or maybe something you got from your mother? It was pointed out to me (maybe even by you) that it didn’t matter that I was on the phone – my hands still went a mile a minute. I’m not sure – do I still move my hands a lot when I talk? I suppose we could learn how to sign and that would give us a proper reason to be moving our hands. Love ya,

  8. Lisa
    Nov 25, 2007

    And you also look like you’re having more fun than anyone else in the picture, so there’s that…

  9. unreliable narrator
    Dec 9, 2008

    AND YOU DID TAKE UP KNITTING!

    (Yeah, I can’t sleep and am reading through old posts.)

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