Ah, yes, the long-awaited fifth installment of my satirical book. My last book idea post happened five years ago this month. Just so y’all know, the book idea did not die with that post. In fact, I now have a 33,408 word manuscript of pure satire. Go me! That’s literally 6,681.6 words a year. Beat that, Stephen King!

As a quick reminder, my book is called The Ultimate Guide to Not Sucking at Human Interactions: An introvert’s obscure advice for succeeding socially

(For some light reading, you can find Parts 1, 2, 3, and 4.)

Technically, my book is done (albeit short). But I cannot help tinkering with it, probably because I’m avoiding the dreaded practice of looking for a literary agent. Don’t have to look for a literary agent for a work in progress. My WIPS should be called WTWNEEs (Works That Will Never Ever End). I get severe writer’s block any time I open my satirical book; I enjoy reading it and then get absorbed in how funny I am. I’m feeling particularly funny this evening, so I figured, “Why not open a new document and try a completely new installment for my stalled book?”

Enjoy! (Or don’t, it makes no difference to me—I don’t get paid either way.)

Part 5: Social skills they only teach at the school of hard knot life

Chapter 17: Nobody ever thinks about you, so don’t worry what anyone thinks of you because they actually aren’t doing it

First of all, I just wrote that to get your attention. This is obviously false. Remember that time in high school you turned your filter off at lunch and called your crush hawt in front of everyone? Yeah. Everyone who was there still thinks about it.

Every moment of every day every person you ever said anything embarrassing to thinks about you. I do not make the rules. You know it’s true, though, because you think about those things at all waking hours, so everyone else does as well. Not to worry, you are the only person for which this is true. Everyone else gets thought of a normal amount (none), but not you.

If you think about it, this fact of life is not the worst thing in the world, and that’s because the worst thing in the world are people who refuse to use the Oxford comma.

Face it, people talk about the embarrassing things you do. You have to tell yourself, “So what?” and pretend not to cry. Sticks and stones may break your bones, but embarrassing conversations will haunt you forever. Give me the sticks and stones, please.

How to repel people to avoid embarrassing situations in the first place: A list

1. We are introverts. We are literally walking embarrassments. It is possible to use this to our advantage. If you live into your weirdness, people will inherently leave you alone which creates less chance for interactions to embarrass yourself during (is that possibly the worst sentence I’ve ever written in my entire life? Yes). It seems counterintuitive (and it probably runs counter to everything else in this book), but you have to go out of your way to be awkward.
2. The only thing worse than social interactions is the people involved in those social interactions. Unfortunately, it is not like an atom bomb. We cannot separate the two entities from each other, even though it would be great if we could because then….explosions! I guess my advice here is to talk about science-y things you don’t know anything about. People hate scientists.
3. Act deaf. All the time.

Chapter 18: How to unmake friends and un-influence people

Exist.

Chapter 19: Eye contact is overrated and potentially life-threatening (although probably not as life-threatening as the bear attacks you’re in store for if you move to Alaska (as a side note of this side note, do not make eye contact with bears))

In order to avoid contradicting previous or future—I am not sure what order my book will be in yet—chapters, let me clarify.

Eye contact with friends and family: not all bad. If you twist my arm until it falls off, I’ll say it is mostly good. Eye contact with those you love (or even those you pretend you love to keep getting free ice cream at their house) is probably good for your relationships. Builds trust. Releases hormones that bring you closer emotionally. Gross, I know. But, for longevity, it’s actually pretty good, and you cannot reasonably expect to change the world if you do not live to at least 157, like me.

Anyhoo. I digress.

Eye contact with strangers: DEFCON -714971

Bet you didn’t know DEFCON levels went into the negatives. Welcome to my universe (aka, hell). There are numbers here, sure, and they are all prime or imaginary, or both. What was I talking about again?

Oh, yes.

Eye contact with strangers is fatal. There is no bouncing back. The CIA released the biowarfare weapon of eye contact ages ago as a form of population control; unfortunately, sunglasses were invented right around the same time. Try harder next time, CIA!

In all seriousness, do not go galivanting your eyes around strangers. Strangers are evil. Stranger danger forever. Never met a stranger I liked. Sure, I can (and have or will) give you advice about how to avoid eye contact during your everyday activities. But, like any person who was once in quality assurance, I know the key to avoiding failure is to find the root cause of a problem and wipe it from the face of the earth.

No, no, no. Not mass murder. I mean in concept. I will give you strategies for avoiding strangers altogether so you won’t have to worry about making eye contact with strangers and dying and having your organs harvested on the black market.

19 easy ways to avoid strangers: A list

1. Run
2. Away
3. Anytime
4. Someone
5. You
6. Don’t
7. Know
8. Approaches
9. You
10. In
11. Any
12. Setting
13. Whatsoever
14. Except
15. Maybe
16. A
17. Pizza
18. Delivery
19. Guy