When You Are That Guy

I survive in the space between two extremes. On the one hand, I find benefit in invisibility but on the other hand, I want to be recognized and admired. While I was growing up, my single aim in life was to skate through without anyone knowing I was there. However, I learned from a counselor years ago that my anxiety and depression are triggered when I feel invisible, worthless, or any suitable synonym.

This morning, I learned that I was “that guy.” You know who that is, the one who causes inconveniences for others and maybe doesn’t even know it or does know and doesn’t care. I had left a review about our tour in Venice on Trip Adviser and went back to see if it had posted. This is what I found instead, “I had a great time and Oscar, our guide, was a good storyteller. History & facts came alive with the stories. Also, Oscar speaks great English, minus strong accent.
I was only unhappy with the long wait for a group of 5 who came back from lunch after the appointed time (I.e. late) and made the rest of us (about 15) waited for them to eat their lunch and fed pigeons with the left-over.”

Guess who that party of five was. Yep, you guessed it. Us. First of all, whenever I read something scathing about myself on social media, my blood runs cold for a second and I can feel all the blood drain from my face. It’s happened before and I cannot control the reaction. Further, I desperately wanted to go back in time and have picked a different restaurant and read the rule about not feeding the pigeons earlier. Then I wished we had apologized to our group for being late. In our defense, after we met up with our group, we discovered they were waiting on a gentleman who was in the bathroom, but he only went to use the facilities because, well, we were late.

And since I didn’t have a chance to explain to the group why, I’ll explain it to you. We had 30 minutes for lunch and accidentally chose a sit-down restaurant for sustenance instead of walking just a bit farther where the quicker fare was to be found. Why? Because we thought we were running out of time. Ironic, isn’t it? Then we feared insulting our waiter and the owner by rushing them, but we did anyway and asked for our pizza to be boxed (and cut because they don’t usually cut it for you) and we ran back to our group with full pizza boxes in hand and 66 Euros poorer. We also managed to insult everyone in the process, the restaurant staff and the tour group! Talk about slam-dunk.

And as we approached, we learned a member of our group was in the restroom so we opened our pizzas and ate really fast while fighting off pigeons. I suppose as a sign of surrender, a person in our group decided if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em and held out a crust for one of them which amazingly landed on his hand to partake. It was really pretty cool. But not cool as we found out by reading a sign later. I also feel like saying that I gave the half of my pizza that I couldn’t finish to a homeless man as we continued our tour and did not feed any pigeons with it.

Every time I rewrite the scenario in my head for a better outcome, I come back to the same thing, is it better to be noticed or not? All of my solutions include abject apologies and invisibility by way of rectification. So I’ve given myself permission to just be “that guy” this time. Nobody died. Nobody was injured. Nobody missed a flight or other important meeting. This same reviewer obviously enjoyed every part of the tour, except for us.

Here’s what the reviewer doesn’t know and I suspect in every situation like this, there’s more to the story that if it were just known, might change the tone. That morning, I had noticed that my Hashimoto’s was flaring up, no doubt due to the unhealthy diet I had adopted while on the trip. It caused my husband and son to make a note that they would have to “keep an eye on me” that day. One symptom is the inability to think clearly. It almost resembles ADHD with self-interruptions, bad judgment, and flakiness. It had been my decision to eat at that restaurant. I was uncharacteristically optimistic about the timeline. We had already ordered before we realized we only had 15 minutes left.

Then another symptom flared, the one called anxiety! I was trying to get us out of there on time without causing problems for anyone at all. I actually think the rest of my party was a little bit confused as to my decision, but they were gracious anyway. We only stood around eating our pizza because there was a man in the restroom, so we figured we might as well gulp our lunch down. We were all pretty hungry and it was ridiculously good pizza, by the way. I have no excuse for feeding the pigeons. It seems like in the states, it’s actually okay to do that but I don’t spend enough time with pigeons to be sure.  As I write this, my anxiety is off the charts, so this is my therapy—to explain what happened to my five blog readers because it’s cheaper than paying an actual therapist. And I can assure you that the pigeons did not mind.

At one point, I just wanted to disappear. One thing I realize from all of this is that there is another aspect that triggers the worst reactions in me—whenever I am recognized and called out for being “that guy.” But maybe, just maybe, it wouldn’t hurt to assume the best about people before berating them in a public forum. At least I’m not “THAT guy!”