I once took a personality test and was grouped as "INFP" -- basically, an introverted dreamer. It couldn't be more accurate. People often think I'm rude for ignoring them -- truth is, I genuinely didn't notice them because I was lost in thought. I'll often absentmindedly bump right into people at the shopping mall. Small talk with strangers is tortuous. The list of people I'm comfortable talking to must fit on the fingers of both hands. It's been this way since I was a little kid, and I don't see it changing anytime soon.
It's not a surprise that I never really mastered some of the more "practical" sides of life. I learned how to drive (just barely), but changing a flat tire? Checking my oil? Fixing anything that's broken? Forget it. Even pulling some thread through the eye of a needle is a task for me.
But as an ATR, you discover things about yourself. On Friday I walked into the office and was given the assignment of making 45 copies of a 300+ page textbook. I don't know why the teacher who was requesting these copies didn't make them herself, but whatever. All the machines were broken except one upstairs, and they warned me, "It's temperamental." The machine was in a tiny windowless room and they had to bring a chair in from a classroom so I'd have somewhere to sit while the machine made these copies. I started the job at 9:15.
The first machine jam might have occurred around 9:20. Uh-oh. I know how to work a copy machine, but as far as fixing them? I'm hopeless. But I opened a few doors, played around for quite awhile, fixed the first jam. Then the slew of teachers started coming in to interrupt my monster job with their own copy jobs. I couldn't say "No you can't make copies because my job won't be done for another three hours." Every time I pressed "interrupt" on my job and another teacher started her job, the machine jammed again. And again. And again. I became an expert at fixing every sort of copy machine problem -- "low on paper" when the machine was full of paper, feed jams, a paper jam, multiple papers jammed in multiple places ... Teachers who went in and out could see that I was running out of patience, but what was I going to do? One teacher even said, "You know, I think I should tell them that you shouldn't be doing this sort of work." I thanked her for the gesture, but told her not to bother.
The job was finally done by 12:50. I informed the secretary downstairs that the copies were ready. "Oh good, well on Monday, I have a new set for you," she said. She must have seen the look on my face, and she said, "I know, it's the job no one wants to do, so someone has to do it."
But on Monday, this impractical introverted dreamer has at least one very practical life skill: I certainly know how fix jammed copy machines now.
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