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SOME PEOPLE ARE BORN clumsy. Tools never seem to fit their hands. Their hammer finds a thumb more often than a nail. For them, running looks and feels like an ungainly, uphill battle—even on level ground.
I don’t claim to be physically gifted. But my clumsiness shows up in a different way. I have a notable social deficiency: I’m naturally clumsy with people. Why is this important? It defined the first quarter-century of my life, including my finances.
Stumbling start. Had I been born in these days of heightened awareness, I might be fingered for testing and diagnosed with mild autism. Yes, I had friends, played grade-school sports and swarmed into class with the other students.
But my in-born emotional wall prevented true intimacy with my mates and resulted in a paralyzing anxiety that accompanied all public performances. I focused on the eyeballs in the stands, rather than the approaching pitch. A simple book report in front of familiar faces led to sleepless nights and a stuttering presentation. My personality traits hampered me from thriving during my childhood years.
Despite this, my childhood wasn’t all misery. My quietly loving parents gave me room to be different, maybe seeing a bit of themselves in their awkward son. The many hours devoted to hunting with my father were joyful, mostly because of the time we shared and the beauty of the woods and fields.
Meanwhile, seven summers with my maternal grandparents allowed an escape to a world away from people. The authentic rural landscape beckoned me on solitary walks of mental freedom, an indulgence missing from my life back home.
Though stunted by my social shortcomings, my studies were a bright spot. Good grades led to an offer to skip my senior year of high school. Instead, I enrolled in the local community college, taking a tentative step away from childhood anguish and aiming for a better adult life. I should have known I’d find more of the same, only amplified. I made it through the first year, but foundered during the second amid a fearful sea of strangers, thus halting my nascent career journey.
What followed were several years of wandering from one job to the next, initially running from people rather than toward a solid profession. Inexplicably, I drifted into a series of direct sales jobs. This shy, young man, who dreaded sitting in a doctor’s waiting room because he might be called upon to make small talk, found himself cold-calling potential customers.
Finding my feet. Needless to say, those jobs weren’t a good fit and didn’t bring much money. But I felt compelled to continue challenging myself, and profited in a way that had lasting implications: I discovered the simple mechanics of conversation. For most folks, talk is innate and automatic, but it was a mystery to me. My linguistic technique, though clunky at first, became almost fluid with repetition, as I attempted to sway customers in my direction.
How could something as simple as chitchat be so daunting? Looking back, my painful ignorance is almost a faint memory. But it was a huge hurdle at the time. Cracking the code of conversation unlocked the key to getting on with people, and prepared me for the next step in my life.
Ed Marsh during his dock- and boathouse-building days. He’s the one at the top of the ladder.
That step, at around age 25, was the beginning of an awakening for me. I joined an older friend who was restarting his business building docks and boathouses. Our partnership lasted six years. During this time, I continued to hone my skills with people, and learned to relish the sales part of the business. I’ve found few experiences match the thrill of making a sale.
Our business was small, with the labor provided by my partner, me and a handful of employees. It wasn’t cushy work. I usually finished the long day mud-bespattered, either drenched with sweat or shivering with cold, bitten by sand gnats or sliced by oyster shells. I also picked up a couple of joint injuries that still linger today. Despite it all, the hard work of crafting a hand-made product that improved the lives of clients was gratifying. And the setting, beside the water in the midst of a bustling city, was a peaceful enclave akin to the brooks and fields I frequented as a child.
My idyll was interrupted a couple of months before my 30th birthday. The approach of that milestone threw me into a reflective mood. Why was a bookworm crawling in the mud day after day, while his true talents languished? On top of that, the money wasn’t great. Suddenly, I felt I was treading water, getting older—and growing uneasy about my future.
A better beginning. In a panic, I signed up for a couple of night classes at the same community college that had witnessed my implosion a dozen years before. But instead of the social struggle that characterized my first stint at school, this second round was smooth by comparison. I won’t say my maladroitness with people had turned to mastery, but I found I was making new friends and influencing others with an ease I hadn’t known before. More important for my financial future, I was back on the path to a satisfying, stable career with a steady income.
My early 30s were a time of rebirth. I traded long hours hammering nails for longer hours cracking the books. The living was lean, but I’d learned frugality from my parents. Money was scarce when they grew up, and they set an example of diligence and thriftiness. I learned my lesson. I’ve never lacked savings, even when I’ve lacked a large income.
Something was amiss in my financial plan, however. Even though I was now on track to a better income, I hadn’t thought much beyond that first post-college paycheck.
My perspective changed while reading my first book on personal finance, a guide published by The Wall Street Journal. This volume—which Jonathan Clements says was born out of a series of articles he suggested the paper run—covered a wide array of money topics, including investing money for the future. Investing? I was an accomplished saver, but knew nothing about investing. That book lit my fire to learn, but the subject had to stay on the back burner, since I was in the throes of becoming a physical therapist.
Thinking of the finish. Nearly three decades later, I’m just a short jog from retirement, and it appears the financial war of paying for it is essentially won. But the decisive battles were fought years ago.
After a slow start, I learned that shoveling money into stock- and bond-index funds is the key to amassing wealth. Accordingly, my wife and I began pouring dollars into our workplace retirement accounts and elsewhere, and we’ve been rewarded with a steadily burgeoning portfolio.
But that investment campaign couldn’t begin until I won the battle with myself. My natural instinct is to beat a hasty retreat from people, both physically and emotionally. Only by tempering this reflex could I begin my quest for a lucrative career. Nowadays, interaction with other folks is mostly habitual, but sometimes I still need to muster the familiar mechanical techniques needed to get the conversational cogs turning.
I’m most at ease when I have a role to fill, like my job as a physical therapist. The sales skills learned years ago serve me well, as I persuade a patient to put my advice into practice. Meanwhile, I garner great satisfaction from seeing my hands-on work help patients lead a better life beyond their present injury.
On a deeper level, fostering friendships that weather the vicissitudes of life and the vagaries of human nature has proven more elusive. Nevertheless, as I ponder retirement, I find comfort in the close relationships I have in my small community and my church. Some friends are dearer than others, but in aggregate they form a web of support. My life is woven into that web.
I’m still people-clumsy at times. Extemporaneous speaking is not a strong point, though I can usually muddle through. Likewise, parties are not my preferred environment. Still, I’ve found I can usually find a kindred soul or link up with a talker who loves a listener. No, I’m not “cured” of my autistic traits. But they no longer define me.
Ed Marsh is a physical therapist who lives and works in a small community near Atlanta. He likes to spend time with his church, with his family and in his garden thinking about retirement. His favorite question to ask a young person is, “Are you saving for retirement?” Check out Ed’s earlier articles.
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Hi Ed,
Again we seem like twins. I believe I too have (undiagnosed) Asperger’s and am a retired PT. Although we differ in the fact while I am a talker my problem is not being able to focus on the other person’s non verbal communication, and it’s not unusual for my wife to point out that I may have opened my mouth and inserted my foot.
I sometimes wonder how I was able to last as long as I did in clinical work. Eventually I moved on to performing prior authorization work for a major health insurance company that better fit my analytical strengths, and my social weakness, which resulted in decreased anxiety as well as blood pressure.
Being retired now is a blessing as I can limit my social interactions, which contrary to what most retirement writings, will allow me to live a longer rather than shorter life.
BTW I think we have something in common with another HD writer David Gartland.
The communication problems resonate. I can also have problems with turning on the talk and not knowing when or where to stop. I’ve learned to wait half a beat before speaking or writing, for best results, but I sometimes forget.
As a teacher (and trainer of teachers) and a strong extrovert, I’ve had to learn to be more sensitive to and inclusive of the introverts in my classes. For example, when I try to lead a class discussion, often it’s 4-5 talkative students who participate while the others drop their eyes and hope I don’t notice them. Some educators would say I should call on them by name to get them more involved, but I feel that students with different personalities shouldn’t be forced out of their comfort zone in the classroom. At the same time, the quieter ones might have something to say but don’t feel empowered to grab the floor as some of their more extroverted classmates do. So I have to find ways to simultaneously respect students’ agency while also making space for them if they really do want to contribute but are not confident in class. Online discussion boards have been a great tool for bridging this gap, as are small group or pair activities.
Thanks for this. As an introvert I really appreciate your sensitivity and willingness to learn that we aren’t all the same nor is it necessary that we be the same. I totally agree with your feeling that students shouldn’t be forced out of their comfort zone which, I believe, is an attempt to get them to be more extroverted and just isn’t who they are. Kudos to you! I wish more teachers understood this.
DrLefty – I like your described method. I remember, back around 1973, an engineering class where the professor (full, tenured) would look at his class roster to ask someone