I bought a volleyball for this guy who lost his in the rafters and was about to leave town forever. I said the whole group chipped in for it, but that was a lie, it was just me trying to be modest and build community. He was confused, and didn’t really know what to say. The people surrounding us were even more confused when I explained that I had a marker for us to all sign it as a goodbye gift. Nobody took me up on it.

The volleyball “crew” has this kind of dynamic. I know it’s trendy in Urbana to flaunt your imposter syndrome but I usually feel like I’m the only one who tries to talk about anything outside of the game – I get this continual sense that everybody is annoyed with me and just being “midwestern nice” – putting up with me out of some civic duty to be polite. They’re not there to connect or bond, they’re there to play.

I do get it, somewhat. In my failed attempts to talk to people one day I managed to mention that I work out 2 times in the span of about 10 minutes and so I was rightfully put in my place when I said hi to someone I hadn’t seen in a while, remarking that it wasn’t since bumping into one another in the scary weight lifting zone. “We get it, you work out” I was told. I’m not even insecure or trying to prove something about my body, really, as it’s incredibly obvious I’m in average shape compared to the people that we play with. I don’t get invited to join the elite crew during their invite-only days. I really just talked about it because it was what was on the surface of my mind. I actually respect the guy who teased me more because he said something directly. Nobody does that. Most others just pile up hidden resentment while I go on having no idea how annoying I am to them.

Later when I was talking to a couple of grad students about what I [used to] do at the Fab Lab with 3D printing I was teased again, suggesting that I should “3D print a volleyball” – and while that much TPU filament might be a bit expensive it’s possible with my TAZ, so I kinda rolled with it in a nerdy response, attempting to remain positive, missing the cue that I was implicitly being asked to simply stop talking.

I’m 36 years old and getting teased like a kid in junior high. And I 3D printed an eco-friendly volleyball-shaped water-regulating planter and brought it to the same guy the next week.

It’s not just men, either. One of the women we play with is one of those ultra-smart-beautiful-talented people in their late twenties who can do just about anything and be forever adored because of the aforementioned qualities. She posted a song to YouTube for a contest and I offered to help her get a better recording like I used to do back in the day and she excitedly said she was interested. I grab the gear from my parents house when visiting over the holidays, go to the effort to inspect it all, reinstall and relearn the software and test several acoustic setups around my house. She backs out for the scheduled weekend. I ask about another. She doesn’t answer. I ask in-person at volleyball and end up sounding like I’m creeping on her uninvited to the others surrounding us. “Oh well if it’s stressful or scary it can be just my partner Megan and the cat there – or just us and the cat!” I wanted to jump off a cliff. We leave it off unresolved. I later spend 45 minutes talking on the phone to a friend who recovered from hyper anxiety disorder that night about how to best talk to someone who probably has a similar condition and craft a very careful message offering to let her just borrow the equipment without me even being there and that it’s also okay if she’s just changed her mind. No response.

I dare to sound like a creep again in-person and am told “Her interest says yes but her anxiety says no”. I can live with that, it’s a real response. But nowhere along the way anywhere in here did she seem to get that I expended a lot of effort for her in all of this. But why would she? This is probably what boys do for girls like her all of the time – I’m not after anything “romantic” but it’s the universal expectation, I guess. I become the one who is desperate and weird for being interested in helping someone else and expecting communication of some sort. I’ve given up on hoping for gratitude.

These are the sorts of experiences that make me think Urbana isn’t a good place for me anymore. But I’m wondering more and more if it’s just that this is what social interactions look like in life now in my mid-30’s.

Finally today when asking a former colleague to glance at my teaching statement I think I discovered the “why” behind all of this. She didn’t get any further than looking at the link thumbnail but noted my initials on the icon are “JAG” (Jeffrey Andrew Ginger). Guess what you get when you look that one up on Urban Dictionary?

And I’m only just now getting this. JAG was the nickname bestowed to me by my friends growing up. It’s no wonder I’ve been hanging out with international folks for a decade.

I don’t actually take any of this very seriously, to be honest most of what I’ve written about here doesn’t hold a candle to how I’ve been treated by a lot of people at the Fab Lab over the past few years. Instead I think it’s evidence that God (whatever that entails) is laughing. A lot. Because how could it not be funny?