How An Extrovert Opened Up The Life of An Introvert
The Yin and Yang of friendships.
It would never have occurred to me to speak to the two young men on the beach.
How young were they? To a woman in her eighties, anyone under fifty is a young whippersnapper.
I don’t say that to be ageist, but thirty or forty years is a long time between generations.
In fact, I hadn’t even noticed the two guys at first. I was too busy making sure my younger friend, she’s only seventy-seven, could see me fly up the stairs without help to realize she wasn’t behind me.
No, as usual, she’d caught the eye of the fellows enjoying the sun finally breaking out of the clouds on foggy Rodeo Beach.
And there you have the basic difference between me and one of my oldest friends. Well, she’s not my oldest friend. That would one of the ninety-two-year-old powerhouses I don’t see nearly often enough.
But I’ve probably known Pam longer than anyone else at this point, but she hasn’t changed.
She attracts people like flies to honey. And the honey she exudes is her winning smile and deeply engaging interest in everyone she meets.
Folks just gravitate to Pam because they seem to know they have a willing audience.
The other day at Rodeo Beach, I was the one who should have stuck out––if you were looking to chat up little old ladies.
Me in my bright yellow jacket that looked like a flashing caution sign.
But it was Pam with a humongous lens hooked onto her camera she’d slung around her neck that drew the eye of the aforementioned fellows.
While I stood at the top of the bluff, catching my breath and thinking, there she goes again. Pam making friends with strangers.
Yeah, I’d been there before.
I could dance naked in Macy’s window and wouldn’t get the notice Pam does. Not even when I was worth looking at naked in Macy’s window.
And it isn’t just her impressive camera, though in recent years, she’s used that to jumpstart a post-retirement career as an amateur photographer. Her biggest asset is her willingness to open up to people on the street and start a conversation.
It has made her a success in getting great candid portraits. And meeting interesting people on the beach. Any beach. Anywhere in the world. She’s been to quite a few of them.
I could go on and on about why Pam is a great friend. But that’s not what I’m writing about.
Sure, in the more than fifty years since we first met outside the breezeway of the Stanford Medical School, we’ve made each other laugh, comforted each other through heartache, and never judged each other.
But in many ways, we’re as different as day and night.
And that’s what stood out on our outing on the beach. At least when I looked down and caught her in her usual position, chatting up strangers while I was off by myself, just watching.
Pam is the prototype of an extrovert. Me? I don’t know what I am. At parties, I can huddle with anyone, and often I’m the last to leave. I like to chat up grocery clerks and bus drivers.
But that’s as far as my comfort zone takes me.
But I don’t have the elderly loneliness syndrome that apparently strikes people my age. I’m very happy in my life.
Though the young are also prone to feelings of alienation.
Still, I don’t have the same large social circle I enjoyed when I was a 9–5er, partly because the work I love keeps me glued to my computer at home.
The lockdown made me think about growing my base of friends, but I’m not a joiner, the groups easily available to seniors don’t appeal to me. And I find making new connections difficult for someone like me. A little bit old, a little bit shy.
Back in the day, I could rely on others to break the ice. But really, when was the last time you came up to a little old lady with a cane and helped her across the street––to the nearest cafe for a cuppa and a chit-chat?
See what I mean?
No matter, I’ve thought. My online connections go a long way to enriching my life. And as I’ve said, I’m not lonely.
But then came the conversation with the songwriter from LA and the professor from a Bay Area university, yeah the two guys Pam picked up on the beach.
They made it up the stairs with Pam and we made introductions all around. For almost a half-hour, I’d say, we chatted and laughed, finding many points of connection, thanks to Pam’s probing questions and willingness to open her life to the strangers, her interest in cycling–bingo, the professor has a cycling website, her time in Santa Monica, yes, that’s where the songwriter lives.
And on and on, we couldn’t stop talking.
Lunchtime called, and we gave our contact info to the songwriter amid promises to stay in touch, an unlikely pairing, the young guys and the little old ladies. But not if you’d listened in on our chat.
Things like age and culture drop away when you just open up and relate to another person.
And that’s what my friend Pam excels at, why she’s a success at photographing strangers. “I establish a relationship first.”
She talks about this on her website, but I already knew that about her. I’ve been watching her in action for fifty years, give or take.
But the other day, after the long shutdown, Pam and I finally had a date to ketchup, as she likes to say, and our connection with these two men reminded me that I could use more of that, making new, engaging friends, which I did that day because of Pam’s superpower.
That’s when I had another realization about Pam and people with her special gift.
They are a national treasure and the secret remedy to the epidemic of loneliness we’ve been reading about.
You say you’re too much of an introvert to break out of your shell and make friends?
No problem. Do what I do. If you’re not an extrovert, or only a part-time social butterfly, hook yourself up to a clone of someone like Pam.
I promise you, you’ll have all the people in your life you need. If you’re lucky, you might even meet two interesting guys on the beach.
