182: Cringe
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Joe worked at this office where every now and then the office manager would bring her nine-year-old to work. Good kid. Kind of tomboyish. And she would just kind of help out around the office. She would pass mail out and over the time that I was there she and I developed this kind of teasing relationship. She would come into my office and she would drop my mail off and stick her tongue out at me and I would sort of fake chase her down the hallway or something and you know. That's sweet. Yeah, yeah, she's an incredibly sweet kid. And so there's this day when it's early in the morning I've arrived at the office and I go into the bathroom and when I come out of the bathroom I have my glasses in my shirt pocket rather than on my head and I look down this hallway and I see this small person walking towards me. And I then get down and start to crab walk towards her so I sort of go down on my haunches and put my hands up as if they're claws and kind of waddle towards her and as I'm waddling towards her I say in this kind of creepy voice, "Oh no, I can't believe you're here today." And then at that moment and as I say today she comes into focus and I realize in fact it's not at all the young girl who I thought it was but it's in fact one of our interns, a business intern who is a midget. And so she comes into focus and I see her and I'm horrified and I go bolt upright and I stand up and I say, "Oh my God, I'm terribly sorry, I thought you were somebody else." And I think to myself, "Who could she possibly think that somebody else is?" And I wonder at the time should I have tried to explain it to her and it seems to me like one of those situations where it only gets worse the more you try to explain it. The only thing I could do is in fact apologize and then end all contact with her forever right there. She also says the woman was utterly gracious, she introduces herself, she tries to put him at ease. But Joseph's not only did he cringe when this happened, he cringes every single time he tells the story. People cringe when they hear the story. And why? Seriously, why? What is it about certain stories that get this physical reaction out of us? You know what I mean? Like what are the physical reactions we ever actually give a story? There's laughing, there's crying, there's cringing. What's in the top three? Well this week at our radio show this American life we have looked into this matter and I have to say if there is scientific literature specifically on the physiology or psychology of cringing, we and many helpful doctors and researchers were unable to find it. But from examining a wide array of cringe stories we have made some tentative conclusions about what it is that makes us cringe. Consider please, Howie's story. It was a sixth grade graduation dance, there'd been one teacher Mrs. S who'd been really cruel to him all year long. He was chubby and she used to examine his papers for food stains which then she would hold up and show the entire class.
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