Into the Wayback Machine, Mr. Peabody…

1965. I was a shy, goofy-looking kid. We just moved to Oak Harbor, Washington, and my new school had dancing lessons for its 5th graders. I don’t know if this was their idea of being a progressive school or if they just ran out of qualified gym instructors, but there I was forced to go hand-in-hand and toe-on-toe with girls – yuck!

I don’t recall slouching before then, but having to touch strange girls (yuck!) and perform ritualistic footwork and posing in front of kids and adults literally made me want to curl up in a ball. So began my habit of hunching / slouching / gazing downward in my attempt to fall into a deep, dark, safe hidey hole.

On top of that, my usual stellar grades were experiencing meteoric declines and they figured out that my eyesight was going fast. So they fitted me with glasses, which along with my pre-braces overbite and newfound slouch made me look startlingly like Jerry Lewis’ Nutty Professor. Pointing and laughing ensued.

Therefore, I withdrew even more. I was soon sent to a speech therapist to correct my near inability to speak out loud. Teenage acne was the final nail in the social coffin. I eventually realized that Clearasil worked only if you applied it daily until you were out of your teens. It’s basically a distraction for a biologically inescapable condition.

At best, this sequence of traumas and resulting useless therapies only improved my ability to be a Wallflower.

Nowadays Wallflowers are called Lurkers, I believe to make us feel even worse about ourselves. It’s an Internet thing, of course. Entering a chat room or exploring a website without making comments is considered by the more social of our species as a breech in etiquette.

I guess the Internet is all about public privacy. We join social websites to network with friends and strangers, yet whine incessantly about the website’s lack of privacy standards. We post Blogs (we called them Diaries back in the pen and paper days) and even Vlogs to express our deepest private thoughts, and then invite comments from strangers around the world.

People put it out there, so I lurked. I poked into chat rooms, read bulletin board threads, explored blog sites, watched vlogs, and lo! – somehow all this public spewing of private guts drew me out! I started making comments, asking questions, giving answers, and even joining in group cyber-activities (see my collaborative videos).

This new form of group therapy actually worked. Now that a webcam was pointed in my direction – totally under my control, mind you – I sat up straiter and spoke more clearly. I replaced my glasses with contacts. I added more color to my all-black wardrobe.

I now blog and vlog fearlessly, and play host to countless Lurkers. It’s okay, my brethren, I understand perfectly. Even now I’m sometimes not in the mood to join in, so I slip back into a Lurker mode. That’s anyone’s option, an Internet right. I’ll come out and play when I feel like it, and I actually feel like it a lot more nowadays.

Jim Lawter

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