RBF

Occasionally I will remark to my friends something like “just once, I’d like to be the person that people on a busy sidewalk scoot aside for, instead of being the one that has to dodge out of everyone else’s way,” or, “having never developed a taste for coffee, I have no universally recognized ‘don’t talk to me until’ indicator”.

In these cases, one if my friends (usually Erin–hi Erin!) will point out,”You need to work on your RBF.”

For those unfamiliar with the term, RBF, or Resting Bitch Face, is a documented phenomenon whereby a person’s default expression, often through no fault of their own, appears capable of withering flowers, causing small animals to cower and run away, and discouraging all but the bravest passers-by from engaging them in human interaction.  These people are not, for the most part, angry at the world; they just have the misfortune of appearing so.

I do not have Resting Bitch Face.

In moments of great effort or extreme stress, I have occasionally managed to achieve RBF, but I’m generally incapable of sustaining it for more than a few minutes.  Decades’ worth of data, in fact, suggests that I have the OPPOSITE of RBF: I actually attract people TO me, no matter how stressed, annoyed, or rushed I am feeling.  Crossing the Corner of Doom to get to my favorite lunch place, which means running the gauntlet of people selling meal subscription services or asking for continuing monthly donations for endangered animals or third world children, is particularly perilous for me, because I will always get stopped, sometimes three or four times in the space of thirty feet.  Back in my Disney days, even when I was in the park on a day off, with no name tag or other indicator that I was an employee, people would still stop me to ask for directions.

I feel a little bit like I’m going through the world at a disadvantage.  Like, the world is full of lions, and I’m that one gazelle that’s ever so slightly limping.

I’ve long sought a name for this condition, and I think I’ve finally landed on one:  Resting Bubbles Face.

Real world examples of my Resting Bubbles Face affliction abound.  For example, last summer at our company’s annual conference, I had to print off some copies at the hotel. After asking around for a hotel business center and finding there wasn’t one, I wound up at the little row of computers in the lobby that’s meant for printing boarding passes and such, with every intention of being that guest that abuses the complimentary printer.  For some reason, I couldn’t get the hotel computer to bring up the document–I even emailed it to my personal gmail account and tried to access it there.  Google, though, is helpfully insanely secure, so after verifying a bunch of things, entering a code from my phone, and answering a security question, it still wasn’t sure it was me logging in.

My progress was hampered by the woman at the next computer.  She was also trying to log into her Gmail, and she was about two steps behind me in the grueling verification process.  The problem was, it was pretty clear she’d never used an English keyboard before.  I wasn’t wearing a name tag or conference badge or anything, but I’m pretty sure she thought I worked there, because she kept asking me for help.  The first time she did, I almost responded “sorry, I don’t work here”, but then I noticed the name she was asking me to type into the Gmail log-in page: the name of a visiting dignitary from Thailand who was attending our conference.

Well, crud.  I should probably help her, then.

I spent the next 20 minutes going back and forth between the two computers, handling every excruciating step of the login verification process twice, and watching the clock tick down until my meeting started.  Finally, about 5 minutes before the meeting where I would need (and wouldn’t have) the copies I was trying to print, the Thai dignitary got to my least favorite part of Google’s security process: the security question.

Hers was in Thai.

As in, the Thai alphabet.

I couldn’t even read it, let alone answer it for her, because I guessed that whatever the answer was, case-sensitive Google would probably insist that it be typed in the Thai alphabet, which I could not do.  I felt a bit relieved, as it meant I was finally off the hook. They’re was no way I could help her any further, and I told her so.

“Wait!” She called as I was walking away.

Once she had my attention, she ordered, “type ‘Thai Rose Airlines’.”

So I tried it, three times, with various combinations of spaces and capital letters, and none of them worked, so I awkwardly excused myself and rushed off to my meeting.

I’ve been thinking about that incident a lot lately, for two reasons.

The first is that, as you can see, it’s not just the Resting Bubbles Face that’s the problem.  Once someone asks me for something, whether it’s help with their email account or a continuing monthly donation on the Corner of Doom, I feel compelled to make it happen to the best of my ability.  My friend Rob says, “you’re the type of person that would devote the kind of brain power and resources necessary to help these people out and make it your problem.” And, I mean, he’s right.  I can’t stop myself.

The second reason I’ve been thinking about the Thai dignitary again lately is because I had no idea that my serial niceness would get me entangled without the Thai language once again.

It started with a phone call from a number I didn’t recognize.  It was a Chicago area code, but it wasn’t marked ‘scam likely’.  Still, a number I don’t recognize is a number that’s not worth pausing a video game for.

When I listened to the message later, it was several minutes of some lady speaking a language I didn’t understand, who had apparently put the phone back in her pocket or purse or whatever without hanging up, because it was very muffled and quiet.  I deleted it.

I got another missed call from that number later, and then, this:

All of which translates to:

Uhhhhh…nope.  I did not do that thing.

It was then that I realized that, as is often the case, I had made things more difficult on myself via my niceness impulse, because, since I was responding in her own language, she was absolutely going to think that was a lie.

So, for good measure, I sent her a sleepy-eyed, messy-haired, glasses and pajamas, I-have-been-playing-video-games-for-several-hours selfie:

I didn’t hear from her again that night, so I assumed it was over, but clearly she never bothered to find out what little brother’s real phone number was, because I kept getting intermittent missed calls from her over the next several days.  Finally, when she called me on the first day of the Star Wars convention as I was on the exhibit floor, I decided to answer the phone and put a stop to this once and for all.

“Hello?” I said.

She seemed momentarily taken aback at hearing my voice, and paused for a moment.  “I’m looking for Khun Po?”

“I think I told you already,” I replied.  “I’m not that person.”

There were several seconds of awkward silence.  I hung up on her.

I have not heard from her since.

In closing, all of this is a great example of why it’s been suggested that the tagline of my life should be ‘I’m sorry I just made this awkward’.