Tired of the radar

Suffering from one of the world’s worst afflictions as I do, debilitating shyness, I have been afforded an unusual perspective in existence. Throughout my time here I have missed out on quite a bit of the normal life experiences. What this has done is made me a watcher or observer of life rather than a full on participant. There are many things that aren’t good about this, but there are some things that have actually been beneficial. One of the best things about this type of involvement is that it has given me the ability to read any situation or person quickly, and with a very accurate summation. I, of course, have been wrong before and will again, I’m sure, but my rate of success in accurate profiling is running at least in the 95-percentile range. Being blindsided by things un-looked for is the greatest danger I face, but then don’t we all? I like to get my palm read or have tarot readings, when these are free of course, because I can usually tell what they are going to say before they speak. It becomes fun when I tell them something about themselves that they didn’t know anybody else knew of. It really scares the hell out of them. But then, I can usually do this with almost everyone. It’s all in the eyes is the best way to describe it. I have run across people that are difficult to read, I refer to these people as having dead eyes. But in reality I have only run across two or three of these people before.
I usually get blindsided by people or things when they arrive un-looked for, or rather, when I am not paying full attention to them or what’s going on. These things pass quickly because if they are that far off my radar they normally aren’t important enough to cause any disruptive ripples.
A couple of the easiest to explain examples of this ability are when I can tell someone what their conversation with another person consisted of, or when I can tell someone what someone else has said, almost word for word. When they tell me of an overheard conversation. I’ve had people do the double take, or say to me “What? Were you in the room at the time?” I can always tell when someone isn’t telling me the truth. My favorite thing is when I hear that I am clueless, that’s funny to me. I heard this one recently “Poor Clay is so clueless, he just doesn’t have any idea” Quite the opposite. I know what’s happening and when and what’s being said as well. The other fun thing is when you hit the nail on the head & tell them something that is true & they squirm with all sorts of denial. You get so used to people telling lies that you have to quickly decide whether or not you want to "die on that mountain” before you say anything. Telling lies is so natural to people, including me, that it can be quite frightening to observe. Small lies to make people’s lives seem more interesting than they really are have become incredibly frequent and you get so numb to it that it barely affects you after a while, but you always know.
The question that comes in is how to handle it all. Getting older has brought about two segments of thought that are opposed to each other. On one hand, you get to the point of it becoming so annoying that you get tired of dealing with it, in other words, a loss of patience. This makes you reach the anger stage much faster. With being the ultimate anti-pacifist this sets me up for immediate violence of action. You would be amazed by the amount of people that think they are capable of instilling fear of their violence toward you. On the other hand you feel like you are running out of time here and feel like it just isn’t that important anymore. Try letting these two points of view wrestle around in your mind for a while. Calmness of the psyche becomes an illusive animal that is almost impossible to track and capture these days.
I didn’t recognize this ability as anything different or important growing up because I thought everyone could do it. So, I have always carried the moniker of being emotional or having an issue with everything, or talking too much about things that most people just don’t speak of. It took me a long time to realize that people couldn’t do it as well as I can. Everyone can do it, just at different levels. The quiet people are the easiest to read for some reason, you would think that it would be opposite, but it isn’t. Having labels applied to you isn’t anything new; we all suffer from it everyday. Specifically with being a white heterosexual southern male. An acquaintance of mine was telling me once that everybody could do it just as well as me, I then asked him what he had done before he got there. He told me that he had gone to lunch with his ex wife and son. I looked at him for a few seconds and then told him what they had talked about and what the content of the argument that they had was. He backed away from me a bit. He told me I should be charging money to people to do tarot readings. I have read books and articles by body language experts in order to educate myself on the subject. These things tend to lean too close to the “parlor trick” area for me, but were interesting. Which directions the eyes moved, or how people hold their hands etc. We’ve all read or heard about it. It’s fun to learn about it, it’s just repetitive behavior. But this can move a little beyond that. Not much mind you, it’s just fine tuned by forty years of doing it. There isn’t anything psychic or otherworldly about it, just years of observation and listening. Sometimes you can do it on the phone but generally its better in person, so you can see their eyes. It does seem to run in the family, but too many of them do believe it is psychic & head off in a strange direction. I found out recently that a cousin used to give tarot readings. We had a long conversation about it all & she told me of people in the family that have done all sorts of weird things. I kept waiting to hear about a relative living out in the woods that gives readings... a dollar and a dime... some things were close to that though. I would love to hear any stories of people in the family that have spoken of this kind of thing before, but for some reason most people don't like to talk about it. I don't believe in it, but it is interesting and fun to hear.
The bottom line is that it just starts to make you feel tired after a while. While you are talking to someone who is feeding you a line of pure b.s. you just want to wave your hand with a general grunt & walk away.