Pamela Jean Owens off-line

I’m looking at the people sitting in the McDonalds on Cuming at 24th Street. Black people, brown people, white people, old and young. Teenagers, families, people like me who come in by themselves. Around lunchtime, and morning coffee break time, work crews from the construction constantly going on in the area, or in winter from the snow plow trucks and the like. Some eating quickly, some watching CNN on the television, others leafing through the newspaper kept on the counter for the customers to read.
This McDonalds has more than its share of street people, being located close to the bus station, the Catholic Worker House, and downtown. But it also has Creighton University people, people on the way to work, and a steady crew of retired black gentlemen who know they’ll see a friendly face and people to call them by name. Being near the interstate and on the way to the airport, this McDonalds gets the occasional tourist, especially when it is College World Series time, and sometimes the families of patients at Creighton Medical Center stop in here.

This McDonalds is not a large store. In fact, it may be the smallest McDonalds in town. But it wins the friendliness award, hands down, in my book. I feel comfortable in this sunny window, knowing I’ll be welcomed and recognized.

If I get here early enough, I’ll see Jack, who shakes too much to be driving his truck all the way from much further north, but isn’t going to quit if he doesn’t have to. If I stay long enough, I’ll see Mr. Ramsey, who comes in on crutches and always sits at the same seat at same table. He counts on someone to get his coffee or sweet tea for him, and often times they’ll pay for it as well. He seldom eats anything here, but occasionally he’ll get a hamburger. He knows all the managers and most of the workers, and they all welcome him and welcome his teasing, returning it in good measure. The staff all worry about Mr. Ramsey’s health, and they worry about Jack’s driving, and when they see one of them coming, it’s not a bit unusual for one of the managers to hold the door open and pull out a chair.

I’m looking at a McDonalds, but I’m seeing an old-fashioned corner coffee shop, complete with a corner. I’m counting on it being here for me, and you’re welcome to join me any morning. But be sure you move over when Mr. Ramsey comes in, if you happen to be sitting in his seat.

Where do extroverts go when it rains?

Well, I guess the flippant answer would be, “If you’re Gene Kelley or Debbie Reynolds, you go Singing in the Rain.”

So (starting again), where do extroverts go when it rains, if they don’t want to get wet and they aren’t on a movie set?

I ask this question both to myself and as a public service announcement to all the extroverts reading my blog who are troubled by the question. I will pass over, without further comment, the unlikelihood of a true extrovert sitting still long enough to read blogs at all, much less having the patience to read mine, and simply say, in good University of Chicago fashion, that I am choosing to “bracket out” that whole discussion, for the purposes of this essay.

Ahhumm, to continue. I puzzle over this question, you see, having finally been diagnosed with much certainty as having nothing about me that is more absolutely certain than the fact that I am an extrovert to the core. And the esteemed psychologist who made said declaration uses CORE as a technical, as well as metaphorical, term.

I received this proclamation and diagnosis with some confusion, having had both the Myers Briggs inventory and my favorite professor and mentor at Austin Seminary tell me that he (with the advice of Mmes. Myers and Briggs) could see what I carefully hid from most of the world, that I was a closet introvert wearing an extrovert’s clothes and functioning, for most appearances, as the true extrovert which I (truly) was not. I received his pronouncement with some relief, as I was very tired at the time and the description of what was going on seemed a reasonable explanation. For an introvert, to behave as an extrovert all the time is very tiring and more than a little stressful, and that was certainly how I was feeling and had felt many times before. Now I hear, from someone I trust almost as much as I trusted Bob Shelton, that I have been an extrovert all along. That would mean I need a whole new explanation of why I am so tired and stressed. Can you see now why I am confused?

At my age, even if 60 is the new thirty, it would be nice to know who I am. Am I Piglet wearing a Tigger costume? Or am I really Tigger, who bounces along, rather unfocused, on oceans of energy, then gets caught up short by all the places he (or in my case, she) needs to be quiet and still and act nice, but he (or she) doesn’t know how? Or am I, as one close friend maintains, more of Owl in a Tigger costume? And if so, what would that mean? I’ve never gotten to know Owl very well in Milne’s stories, and perhaps that fact, in and of itself, should tell me something. Is there a CORE Map based on the stories of Winnie the Pooh?

On my CORE Map profile (the CORE Map is a more nuanced advancement on many of the same principles behind the Myers Briggs), I always show up very low on Relater skills, and high on both Entertainer and Commander. Certainly Tigger is low on Relater, well-meaning though he certainly is. And without any doubt Tigger is nothing if not Entertaining. Usually Entertainers (and often Commanders) are out-front people, true extroverts, while Relaters are commonly introverts, so all that fits. But then there are those actors and other professional Entertainers who, when interviewed by David Letterman, admit they are terrified every time they step on a stage. Personally, I find that hard to imagine.

I love entertaining, in all its forms, for whatever that may be worth at this point. I took to heart in childhood Shakespeare’s wisdom that “all the world’s a stage, and the men and women in it, merely players,” and I have been living life as though on stage ever since. I think that may mean I really am an extrovert, or it may just as easily mean I am not. You see my problem?

Now if I were purely Entertainer, and not also that pesky Commander and even pickier Organizer, I could just go with the flow, happily and blissfully bouncing along, never minding what is coming along in front of me that I may trip over, or what forest I may be about to get lost in.

But, alas, I am not purely Entertainer. I am also Commander and I am somewhat of an Organizer. And I am very certain that I am a writer. And a writer is, in CORE Map theory, almost always an Organizer of some sort, as well as sometimes something of an Entertainer. I LIKE organizing things, I just get bored easily and have trouble making up my mind how to do it so it will work, amuse me, and also be attractive. But (woe is me) Entertainer/ Organizer is not a possible emotionally healthy CORE personality type. Entertainers need an audience. Organizers have to work a lot in solitude. Writing is a solitary task, one that takes much concentration and isn’t often carried out in a group setting. That’s why writing often is the habitat of Organizers, and of Introverts.

But I have a passion for writing. Whether I am a writer or not is not in question, no matter what any inventory says about me. When I get an idea in my head, it feels like it will burst out and crack my skull open if I don’t put it in words, and put it down where others can read it. I don’t think introverts are particularly fond of putting their words out there — aren’t introverts the writers who have boxes full of great stories they never published that their children find after their death and publish (or don’t publish), with great fanfare and the public hanging on every word?

Yet if I stay indoors too long, my brain starts to burst in another way. I get what Mother called “stir crazy,” and saying “crazy” is no exaggeration. If I don’t get outside and get some fresh air and sunshine, or whatever is passing for sunshine on any given day, my brain starts to burst through my skull as though it is itself reaching for a window or door. I have to get out of the house every day, or I know without a doubt that I will end up depressed and immobilized. Ok, note to self: “needs to get out, maybe not an introvert.”

So, back to the question, “Where DOES an extrovert go when it rains?” Do you see where I am going with this? A writer generally needs to be indoors, or so it would seem, like an extrovert when it rains. So a writer who is an extrovert, like me, faces the same quandry on a daily basis as does my metaphorical extrovert in the rain.

The answer is simple, and it is, in fact, the answer given by many writers when asked the question, “Where do you write?” Second only to a quiet solitary study, comes “a coffee shop,” or “the McDonalds,” or “the bakery,” or sometimes even “the park.” Any place with people coming and going works, when you are not an introvert (!), as long as it’s a place you can sit all day without anyone complaining. Free refills on whatever you’re drinking, for as long as you stay, is nice too, but a thermos in the park might be place of choice on a beautiful day. If it’s beautiful, but cold, I just choose a sunny window in the corner at my favorite McDonalds, and I get the feeling that I’m getting my vitamin D and fresh air, even if it isn’t quite the original of either. And, oh, the people I meet! But those are other stories for other days and other essays. For now, I’ve answered the question, and that’s all I promised.

(Ok, already, this is not earth shaking news and maybe not even interesting, but, hey, I liked the title and I got you to read it, so that’s enough for me.)