had a bit of an odd moment about social awkwardness recently.
my friend group does our own friday night magic gathering at my dad's workplace (it's a driving school and has a classroom so he lets people use the space when not being used for the business). At one of these gatherings, a person who works in one of the neighboring units was invited by to see what it's all about, as he was interested in the game.
The new guy didn't sit down, but just kind of stood around the various tables we were all playing at and occasionally asked a question about the game play. Apparently he's played the pokemon card game before and was trying to understand what was transferable vs different with MtG. He repeatedly turned down offers for him to sit down, or even try a practice game with a lent deck. Eventually he thanked us for letting him come by and left.
On the way home that night, my boyfriend brought up the oddness of the new guy's behavior. He pointed out and then asked me to confirm that the new guy's actions- hovering, not really engaging when offered, silent observing instead of joining discussions- were anti-social and a bit awkward, even rude.
And I confirmed, yeah, by a lot of cultural norms, the new guy had been varying amounts of awkward and maybe even rude. And my boyfriend asked me why I didn't seem upset or off-put by any of it. And I just kind of turned to him and raised an eyebrow before saying something to the effect of,
"I am very used to not taking anti-social and awkward behaviors personally. There's not a single member of our normal friend group that's not on spectrum or anxious or some flavor of neurodivergent, if not more than one. So it's not hard for me to extend the grace and benefit of the doubt I have on hand for my known friends to a stranger."
And he just kind of looked at me for a moment before going, "Oh. Oh, yeah. Huh."
Which just prompts me to remind everyone, that we can extend grace to strangers, even if their brand of awkwardness is different from the ones we're used to understanding from our friends and families.
