Anne Evans-Cazier, LCSW

As a little girl growing up in Los Angeles I took the bus to and from school.  Each afternoon there was what seemed to me to be an immense line of buses outside the school, and each bus had a colored sign so you could tell which one to get on, even before you could read. This was all well and fine and I had no trouble finding my bus, getting on and then off at the right stop. The trouble came when somehow I missed it when the teacher explained to us that the routes had changed and we might have a new color.  That afternoon I confidently got on what I thought was the same bus as usual and we started to head out.  It wasn’t long before I began to look around and realize that I didn’t recognize any of the other kids on the bus and that we were definitely not headed towards my neighborhood!  

Now you might think that a reasonable thing for a child to do at this point would be to ask for some help, but I was very shy and asking someone I didn’t know, either another kid or even the bus driver, seemed totally out of the question.  As I sat there, torn between the shame of admitting that I had gotten on the wrong bus and the terror of sitting there not knowing where I was going, I suddenly realized that we were not too far from my friend Eileen’s house. 

So what did I do? 

I pretended I knew what I was doing and got off at the next stop and started walking.  After the bus pulled out of sight I was a little less confident.  I really wasn’t that sure how to get to Eileen’s house from there, but I wandered around and around, circling back and forth, and eventually I found it.  Her family wasn’t home, so I sat on the front porch and waited, and waited, until finally they appeared and helped me get home.

Gratefully, nothing terrible happened to me that day because of my shyness, but I realize now that it was a part of a bigger pattern in my life.

I was too shy....

• to ask for help if I didn’t understand the teacher’s instructions,
• to ask if I could join the hopscotch game,
• to ask to sit with someone at lunch.

So I did the assignment wrong, sat alone, and pretended I didn’t want or need friends or help.

It took me a long time to figure out better ways to handle my shyness.  Eventually I learned how to be a good student, to admit when I need help, to ask questions, and to reach out to others.  In the meantime, I missed out on many opportunities for growth, for fun, and for connection.