Hi y’all -
Overreacting…that’s my middle name! I feel like anybody I’ve interacted with in a remotely personal setting has probably seen my overreact to something.
Am I unsettled about something arbitrary for no good reason? Yeah, seems like me.
Am I stressed about something I said to a child when I was also a child? Indeed, I probably am.
Did I yell at someone? I’ve been told I “yell” in my mind a lot more than I yell out loud, so maybe not. But I guarantee, in my mind, I sounded rude.
I basically have two settings. Overreacting, or just complete lack of reaction. I rarely react the right amount. I’m working on it, okay?
But today’s blog is a collection of my favorite over and under-reactions!
3 Times I Overreacted
1. The Dentist Incident of 2023
Okay, so…about a month and a half ago, I was supposed to go to the dentist. The night before said dentist appointment, I started to feel a little sick. And then I found out I had been exposed to Covid just a few days prior.
Like any reasonable adult, I decided I should not go to the dentist. They would be literally in my mouth. Coming face-to-face with my germs. It was the right decision.
But the situation went south quickly.
The next morning rolls around and I’m like, yeah, this is a no go. So again, I decide to do the responsible adult thing and call to let them know I will not be making it.
Only problem, I had the first appointment of the day at 7:30 am. So 7 rolls around and I give them a call. Ring…ring…ring…no one answers.
No worries, I still have 30 minutes. I’ll call back in 15.
So 7:15 rolls around and I call back. Yet again, I reach voicemail. This time, I decide that since I’m within the 15 minute window, I’ll leave a voicemail.
And I say a lot of reasonable adult things like…Hi, I’m sick. That’s really gross so I’m not going to make it for my 7:30 am appointment. So sorry for the short notice! Call me back so we can reschedule.
And I go on with my life.
But then, the day goes by and no one calls me back. The week goes by and no one calls me back. And like any unreasonable adult, I quickly jump to the conclusion that they have not received my voicemail, they think I stood them up and they’re bad mouthing me around the dental clinic.
I see no other conclusion that could have been drawn.
So instead of, like, following up, I do something that was absolutely TOO extreme. I decide that my only option is simply to find a new dentist. I cannot face the shame of them thinking I stood them up. I CANNOT be the one to call and schedule the appointment. I simply have to start over. No questions asked. No other choices. I am backed into a corner.
So literally a month goes by. I’m like, wow my teeth are dirty. Wow, I’ve got some pain. I should really go to the dentist. But I stuck to my guns because I am ridiculous.
Fast forward a few more weeks, eventually they texted me saying I was overdue for an appointment. I did finally call. I did make sure to explain the ENTIRE story about being sick, about leaving a voicemail, never hearing anything but finally needing to reschedule. The lady on the phone did not care. It kind of seemed like no one had spread aggressive rumors about me.
The rescheduled appointment has not happened yet. I will report back on if they treated me differently. There’s still a chance we will not recover and I will have to find a new dentist.
2. The Time I Dropped My Phone
Here’s another thing you probably know about me if we’ve spent any semblance of time together: I drop things all the time. Like, I’ll just be minding my own business, not moving my body, not even holding anything (I SWEAR) and somehow I drop something.
It’s honestly almost a skill.
Sometimes it’s funny, sometimes it’s embarrassing, sometimes it haunts me, like in this story.
A few years back, I went out to a restaurant. It was one of my very first restaurant visits after the pandemic and I essentially just forgot how to be a person in public.
How do I order food? What do I touch? Where do I breathe?
So I was already kind of stressed out. And then I realize that my phone has fallen out of my pocket and has landed between the booth and the wall.
Because I am a person and not a sheet of paper, there is no way my arm could fit in that crevice.
Embarrassed, I tell my friend about the situation. We briefly switch sides of the booth and she inconspicuously tries to fish out my phone. No dice.
At this point, I’ve just accepted my fate: I have to get a new phone. This is obviously the only option. I don’t care about my photos. I don’t care about my contacts. I will start over to avoid the embarrassment of asking the restaurant staff for help.
My friend, on the other hand, reacted in a very appropriate way. She explained the situation to the waiter. The waiter used his literal superhuman strength to pull the booth out. I retrieved my phone. I also saw some things I can never unsee between the booth and the wall. And I went on with my life.
If it weren’t for my brave friend, I would simply have started a new life that day. With my contacts, my photos and my connection to the world gone, I wouldn’t even be Lisa anymore. I might be Gertrude from Indiana, raising goats and teaching Yoga.
TBH, that feels far-fetched, but it could have been.
3. That One Time I Got Really Hot in a Meeting (And All The Other Clothes Incidents)
I am notorious for feeling overstimulated by my clothing.
A shirt that is touching my neck too much? I can’t do it.
Pants that have a dog hair weaved into them poking my leg? No, absolutely not.
Are the seams on my jeans too pokey? I’m getting new pants.
This happens to me all the time.
The problem comes in my inability to move on. If it happens, I literally can’t think about anything else until either the problem is solved or something even more uncomfortable afflicts me.
This also happens frequently with temperature. Like if I get cold, I feel like I am in a tundra and I will never be warm again. And if I get hot, it takes like 3 seconds before I feel like I am melting.
And that takes us to the day of this fateful meeting.
One time a few years back, I was in a client meeting in the hot conference room. Normally this is not an issue because I am always cold. But on this day, I was not cold.
So we begin the call and I'm conversing like a normal, professional human. Until suddenly I realize how hot I am and there’s nothing I can do about it.
I am not equipped in the type of outfit where I can shed layers and still be a professional human. And I am not able to stop thinking about it.
And this is what happened. I am mid sentence. I’m talking about some marketing shit and then all of sudden a say, “Wow. It’s really hot in here. Sorry, I would not have been able to move on if I didn’t say that out loud.”
And then I went back to the other half of my sentence. Thankfully, the clients have interacted with me long enough to not be taken aback by this occurrence. But I was taken aback.
To this day, this story haunts me a little bit but also always makes me laugh. And every time I’m hot I think about it. Also anytime someone tells me an awkward client story, I think to myself (and also sometimes say out loud), it couldn’t have been as bad as what I did.
The good news is that I really was able to move on after I verbalized it. The bad news is that I got really sweaty.
Overreaction at It’s Finest
So there you have it. As you can see, I overreact about things that are extremely small in the grand scheme of things. I am absolutely worried about embarrassing myself in front of strangers or people thinking I am a rude person. And apparently, I think the appropriate way to solve every problem is just to start over. New dentist, new life. If you don’t hear from me again one day, just know that I probably embarrassed myself in front of too many people I have to see again and I simply decided to escape and start fresh.
3 Times I Did Not React Nearly Enough
On the other hand, I sometimes just do not have enough of a reaction. I’ve been told by people that I do some crazy things without thinking through the consequences. That is true. I’m not sure if it’s good or bad or maybe both? I’ll let you decide.
1. The Tattoo
I got my first (and only) tattoo on a whim one Wednesday. I did not have an appointment but I planned to go on “walk in day” to a place I had picked out. So Wednesday rolled around. I called a few times to see if they had availability. No one answered. So Ben and I drove there. And they were closed.
Ben proceeded to be a logical human and tell me that he thought I should wait because I’d picked out a place and I should stick to it.
And what happened next…well it was technically a reaction. But it was not the one you’d expect.
I told Ben, let’s go to the place up the street and see if I can walk in.
So we did that. And they were like, sure, wait 20 mins and watch some South Park. This place was not the vibe I was going for. But I simply did not react. I watched some South Park and I waited.
Then the tattoo man comes out. I find out he’s the apprentice (totally fine) and that he is 20. That is also fine, but I think to myself, this man cannot legally drink in public yet he can ink me up? Okay, cool. That makes sense.
I tell him where I want to put it. He’s like okay cool, but have you thought about this other placement instead? He had logic, it made sense. So I was like cool, let’s do it.
He prints it up. I ask exactly one question. And then I say, looks good. He puts the stencil on. I check it out. I have no feedback.
I get my first tattoo from a 20 year old on a Wednesday.
I told nobody this was going to occur. I simply did it.
2. My Most Recent Haircut
A few weeks ago, I got to work and someone says to me, did you cut your hair?! I like it!
Did I cut my hair? Oh yes, I cut my hair. Last night at 10:30 PM. In my bathroom.
I simply could not stand my hair anymore in that moment. It was long. It was weighed down. It kept getting stuck in zippers. If I had been more of a logical human, I might have taken a pause and evaluated my options. But here is what I did instead.
I found two uneven ponytail holders. I put them tentatively where I wanted to cut my hair. And it was several inches. Not one. Not two. SEVERAL.
I was cutting off so much hair that I actually couldn’t look down and see it and cut it. So I cut it using the mirror as my guide.
The only problem is that it doesn't work well. And by the time I’m done, there are several inches of hair lying in the sink. And I cut both sides CROOKED.
Now if I’ve learned one thing about cutting my hair on a whim, it’s that I do not have the skills to even it out. If I try to even it out, I will end up cutting off several more inches and both sides will still be uneven.
So…I just left it. I took a shower. I brushed it out and trimmed off the stray pieces that didn’t make it into my mirror cut.
And then I went to bed and showed up at work the next day with several inches cut off my hair.
I did not react enough. I did not pause long enough. I went from 0 to 100 and within literal moments my hair was gone.
The good news is that it didn’t really bother me. The bad news is that I cut it too short to fit in a bun. But some of the long crooked pieces are long enough now, so you can find me with a half bun and not nearly enough shame.
3. Buying Our House
You know how people have stories about touring 30 houses before finding the one? Or bidding on 7 hours before getting an accepted offer? Ben and I do not have that story. Granted, it was a different time before the market was crazy. But our story went a bit more like this.
One day, I was talking on the phone to my Dad and he made some comment that made me realize that buying a house wasn’t as unbelievable as I thought. And then like the true monster that I am, I was just like, okay, I’m going to do that then. We got going with the process very quickly, but we did our research and asked our questions.
We were pretty picky about things we liked and didn’t like and the areas we wanted to be in.
So we toured one house and it was okay. We toured another house and it smelled like smoke covered up by air fresheners. And then we saw a house we just loved.
We went the next day to tour it. We heard that it had already had over 20 showings on day 1. So we put in an offer.
We had viewed 3 houses total and just did it. And then the next day, we woke up and drove 6 hours to St. Louis. We waited by the phone to see if our offer was accepted. And then it was ours!!
I love our house, but here are some things that surprised me because I may have not reacted enough.
Our house only has one closet. Should I have known this? Probably, but it was news to me when we moved in!
Our house had a secret basement room. I feel like this may have been a surprise to everyone? But it was definitely a surprise to me.
Our house has virtually no airflow upstairs. Might have been nice to know, but hey, we found out eventually.
Again, I am not unhappy with this choice. It just seems very much off-brand for me to buy a house after almost never considering the possibility.
Big Things Apparently Don’t Stress Me Out
So there you have it. I overreact about the silliest of things and I give maybe not enough consideration to the big things. The truth is, I am just a major over-thinker. I do not just have decision fatigue. I frequently have decision paralysis. I become so overwhelmed by the endless world of options that I just give up and never make a choice. So when the opportunity presents itself to make a spontaneous decision…well, sometimes it’s just right. So it goes.
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