I have very few points of pride. My eyebrows, back in the day. My sense of direction. Also, I’ve been told I’m pretty good at reading social cues and acting on them. Yesterday, though, my faith was shaken.
I was in the yard at the house we just moved into when an Amazon van came down the driveway. I was walking Charlie, who hates delivery vehicles of any sort. The driver stopped. Charlie started barking.
“Hi,” I screamed. “Sorry. He’s got a thing about vans.”
Not cracking a smile, the driver shrugged. “No problem.” He squinted his eyes and massaged his temples. “Are you number 5?”
“No, number 1,” I told him.
He sighed. “Do you know where 5 is at?”
I cheerfully explained we’d just moved in, but my best guess was it was at the other end of the road. Maybe he should go straight instead of bearing right at the fork? Or maybe number 5 was the house directly on the street, not set back, the one over (I pointed) there? Or maybe…
“Never mind,” he said, throwing the van in reverse and sending gravel flying as he backed the van down the driveway.
So. A sunny warm afternoon in late spring, a Friday, a 20-something guy with a thankless job, on the edge of the weekend; along comes me, chatterbox in rumpled shorts with a small dog barking incessantly…to that irritating context, add these non-verbal cues: a foot hovering over the gas pedal, mouth a tight, straight line, a shrug, that sigh from the depths of his tortured soul. The dude just wanted to deliver his packages and go home.
I misread him.
I picked up Charlie, who settled into my arms and licked my chin. “Fine,” I said. “We’ll go back inside.”
When it comes to reading social cues, I think I need to practice more on humans.