Bruno

Discussion (4) ¬

1. 
   Peter Rogan

   December 21, 2018 at 2:31 pm | #

   This is so embarrassingly awkward I can’t imagine cringing through either side of this social exchange. Again I marvel that Bruno feels her social skills are so lacking as to put herself through this. Again I wonder how she can be so without self-knowledge. This feels contrived on Bruno’s part – a deliberate forcing of herself to go through very rudimentary encounters that she either missed the first time or feels she got wrong.

   No way to tell either way without her going through this sort of bizarre dance and figuring out if she were right either way, or wrong on both counts and has to start from somewhere else. At this point I am forced to take this strip to somebody else and ask, “Does this read as awkward to you as it does to me?”
2. 
   llirium

   December 21, 2018 at 5:41 pm | #

   This is what living through life was like for me, bumbling around being social without knowing I was missing all the physical cues of annoyance, boredom, or “not interested”… then I was diagnosed with Asperger’s and all those years of social floundering suddenly made sense.

   These simple kinds of body language and facial gestures are lost on me without trying to specifically look for them. The pattern recognition software for social learning is (somewhat) missing in my brain.

   The trick now is to compile and run that software by “writing” it myself, with logic instead of intuition.
3. 
   Christopher

   December 21, 2018 at 6:40 pm | #

   @Peter, it is cringingly awkward! It was painful to have to start at the beginning and try to learn all this stuff in my 30s because I realize I just hadn’t. Bruno helped me work through it.

   @Ilirium, I’ve had similar struggles, you are not alone!
4. 
   Peter Rogan

   December 22, 2018 at 10:59 pm | #

   Christopher: Thanks again for reminding me of Hemingway’s encomium on the process of writing.

   It’s easy, he said. You just sit down at the typewriter and open a vein.