I was fairly shy growing up. I know that’s hard for many of you to imagine, at least if you’ve met me as a performer/entertainer. But if you were to meet me at a party and I wasn’t wearing a pirate costume, you’d hardly notice me at all.
Instead, you’d find me in a corner somewhere, quiet, but enjoying the party as I would be observing all the little things around me that helps fuel my life as a writer. Hey, this isn’t called RobZerrvations for nothing.
I only recently came to find out that approximately 20% of the population is shy. They are referred to by psychologists as “sitters.” And they happen in nearly every species, man or animal.
For those wondering what the other 80% are called, they are “rovers.” Statistically, they are far more likely to end up in a hospital with an injury, have affairs, change relationships and drive buses full of senior citizens with reckless abandon.
I never liked being shy. I wanted to be more rover-like. There was even a time when I thought I was a rover, back when I was hepped up on the SSRI, Lexapro. It was during this time in my life that I didn’t worry about the consequences to my actions. I can thank this “wonder” drug for me leaving a 10 year marriage and shuffling off to Florida.
Off it now, I have returned to the shy person I once was, albeit with some reprogramming that makes life more bearable for me in a post-Lexapro world.
I am quite happy about this, particularly since I stumbled upon an article in the New York Times recently about sitters and rovers. It seems that most of the creatives and artists of the world are the sitters. It turns out that in testing, sitters test much higher than rovers in observation. They are more careful and astute, and notice the little things. As such, they excel at making associations and connecting things together, at least compared to their roving counterparts who are busy being the life of the party.
Sitters earn a disproportionate number of National Merit Scholarships and Phi Betta Kappa keys, too. And when tested on a breadth of subjects from art to astronomy, the sitters tested higher because they tend to spend more time learning and less time being a social butterfly.
I used to think being shy was a stigma. Society wants us to believe it is, well, at least the 80% that are rovers. However, in the wild, being a sitter actually works in the favor of a species.
In the article, they talk about pumpkinseed sunfish. In an experiment, they found that the rover fish were more likely to be caught with bait in a pond. The sitters stayed back, preserving the species. The anxiety of the situation helped ensure the survival of the pumpkinseed sunfish (and I know how important this is to all my pumpkinseed sunfish loving friends).
But on the flip side, in captivity the rover fish adapted to their new environment more quickly, eating five days earlier than their sitter brethren. In this situation, they were more likely to survive. This explains, by the way, why all the good food is gone at a party before you any of us sitters get there.
Researchers found that with many species, the rovers would venture out, all to ready to take the bait. As such, they were the more likely to be killed or captured by hunters and sportsmen. The shy often really do inherit the earth, it seems, because they stayed back and waited.
Growing up, I always wanted to be in the 80%. I longed to be one of those popular kids who were the social butterflies, who could effortlessly blend in with any situation they found themselves in, always the life of the party.
But I can still remember dreading being invited to a friend’s birthday party in elementary school, because inevitably I would have to meet people I didn’t know. Worse, I would have to anxiously wait for them to open my gift, praying that they liked it. Looking back, I’m not even sure how I made friends in the first place, since I usually couldn’t muster up the courage to talk to anyone in class on the first days of school and I grew up alone, no one my age being on my block. Thank god there were other shy kids who were just like me. I think our shyness brought us together.
These issues continue to haunt me 45 years later. I still find it hard to make friends or converse easily at parties. I often just don’t go to to parties unless there are quite a few people there I know already.
I used to envy those people who could just go to any soiree and effortlessly blend in within moments and become the life of the party. I think that’s why I was attracted to some of my ex-whatevers. They were like a crutch in social situations. They could be the center of attention while I could just blend in, hang back, sit in a corner and observe my surroundings. It was an ideal yin-yang situation for me. I could enjoy the best of both worlds.
But I’m starting to figure out that my lot in life isn’t so bad. When I do attend social functions, they offer a plethora of fodder for these columns I’ve been writing. They are a godsend for the memoirs I am just finishing up and yes, some of the characters I have met along the way will soon be ending up in a couple fiction books and a movie script I have on the horizon.
I guess it’s the great equalizer. To quote my favorite line from a Knight’s Tale, when Chaucer is beaten and stripped for his gambling debts he replies, “I will eviscerate you in fiction. Every pimple, every character flaw. I was naked for a day; you will be naked for eternity.”
Out on the Treasure Coast, seeing who’s going to end up naked today,
— Robb