Ambiguphobia—the fear of being misunderstood.  (No, I did not just make that up.  It’s a real thing, people.)  I’ve always known I have it, but I don’t think I realized the depth of my ambiguphobia until yesterday when I discovered how many people had no idea what I meant by the title of my blog and my online handle.  It was…distressing.  I think particularly because I had spent so much time congratulating myself on the clever conception of the name when I started this whole blogging endeavor. 

“Look, lbs like pounds and also like me!  I’m lbs!  And when I write something it’s like By lbs!  And when you buy things, you can buy them by the lb!  (Only there’s an “s” in my initials, so it would be by the lbs, which is even better because that makes the play on words even more obvious!)  Buy things like nuts!  I’m nutty!  Nutty goodness!  By the lbs: nutty goodness in bulk or by the pound!  That’s it!  That’s the name!  The perfect name!”

I’m not sure why it never occurred to me before that this line of reasoning wouldn’t be completely obvious to everyone else, especially given how you all wouldn’t automatically know what my initials even are.  I must have assumed that the bythelbs would be sufficiently odd (I mean, who says “Oh yeah, I buy these by the pounds.”  You don’t buy by the pounds, you buy by the pound.) that one would naturally deduce that “lbs” must also represent something else like, say,  initials.  “Oh, this blog must be written by someone with the initials lbs.  By the lbs.  By the pounds.  Snort.  I get it.  Clever girl.”  I am an idiot.

Now that I think about it, it’s really very unlike me to take this kind of thing for granted.  I am like the queen of over-explaining myself.  Well, at least in my mind I am.  I say something to a friend or type something in a comment on a blog, maybe something I think is witty or clever and then I sit there and wonder if anyone will get it, but when you have to explain a joke it’s not really funny, right?  Particularly with the blogs (because you can’t add all those subtle nuances of voice inflection and delivery that are sometimes vital clues to how a joke is best interpreted or received), I’ll sit there staring at a comment I’ve just written, debating back and forth whether I’ve been sufficiently clear.  Am I clear?  AM  I  CLEAR?!  Dare I submit?  DARE I?!  Sometimes in my lack of confidence I just erase my comment and click away.  Better to say nothing than to have people mistakenly think I’m a dork.

And it’s not just about the joke.  I worry about offending people with a misunderstanding.  When I was walking my girls home from school yesterday, Goose and BigHugs had run out a few yards ahead of me.  They are pretty good about stopping at each corner and waiting for me before crossing the street, but they were approaching this one crosswalk at kind of a jog and I noticed a big truck getting ready to turn through it so I yelled, “Stop!”  And when the girls didn’t immediately stop, I yelled, “Stop!  Stop!  STOP!!!”  And then the truck driver looked at me as he drove past with us all standing on the corner, and I was suddenly worried that perhaps he thought I was yelling at him to stop, so I immediately said in a voice I hoped was loud enough to carry the 20 feet down the street he had already gone, “GIRLS, YOU NEED TO MAKE SURE TO STOP AT THE CORNER AND WAIT FOR ME.  THAT NICE TRUCK WAS TRYING TO TURN.”  But in retrospect, he was most likely giving me the evil eye for letting my young children run wild on the sidewalks.

I’m not one for acknowledging strangers I pass on the street.  As I’m walking, I usually just keep my head down and pretend I’m preoccupied with something.  If I’m with BigHugs I might start talking to her  just as I’m approaching someone so that they can think I am too engrossed in my conversation with my three year old to notice them rather than think that I’m unfriendly.  I would be happy to be friendly.  A “hi” or a head nod or even just a smile is not beyond my capacity for interaction with my fellow human beings, but I’m afraid of the possibility of that being misinterpreted as well.  When I walk to pick up my girls after school, there’s this nice young Asian man sitting at the bus stop on the way.  One day I just happened to look in his direction just as he was looking up from his book and I felt trapped, so I smiled.  He smiled back.  A perfectly lovely random encounter.  Then the next time I walked to school, I made a special point of smiling at him because I figured we had already established this smiling relationship and it would just be rude to go back to ignoring him.  He smiled again.  Then the next time I did this kind of combo smile/quick head nod/staccatoed “Hi” thing and he just kind of looked away.  No smile.  Did he see me?  Did I breech some kind of code of social etiquette progression by moving up to the “Hi” so soon after the smile relationship was established?  Was he beginning to worry that this wacko old lady mom was trying to hit on him?  Did he take my head nod/Hi as a mockery of his Asian culture?  It was a nod, not a bow!  A “hi”, not a “hai!”  (No pick!  No pick!!)  Then last Monday I was driving the kids to piano in the opposite direction that I walk to the school, and I saw my young Asian man friend sitting at a different bus stop on the opposite side of the street.  Did he change bus routes just to avoid me?  Did I make him that uncomfortable?  But then yesterday he was standing up at his regular bus stop, and as I approached him he shot me a big, beaming grin.  So either I had nothing to worry about to begin with, my paranoid delusions getting the best of me yet again,  or my young Asian man friend has thought about it, weighed the pros and cons, and decided to accept my unintentional advances.  I suppose either way, I’m golden.

And now I don’t remember where I thought I was going with this whole thing, but I’m afraid any further attempts to explain myself will only serve to muddy the waters into muddied waters oblvion, so I’ll just say, “Hi.  My name is Bythelbs.  I mean LBS.  I mean my actual initials are L.B.S.  But I go by Bythelbs.  Like by the pounds, as in by the pound, and also by the lbs, as in my actual initials.  And I’m an ambiguphobic.”

Are you?

 

Classic crazy.