Let me tell you about the night I knew that I was “cured.” Daffy and I were working a trip to London and, while chatting in the galley, Daf told me she was proud of me.
“Why?” I smiled. But I knew why. It was because now I was comfortably looking right into my passengers’ eyes whenever I asked, “Would you like coffee? Or perhaps you would prefer tea?” (Flight attendants spoke in complete sentences in those days.)
I already felt like a successful student. But, on our London layover, she gave me another of those now-familiar “I’ve-got-something-up-my-sleeve” expressions.
“Uh oh,” I said. But this time I didn’t mind, because her help with my self-styled Graduated Exposure Therapy had worked wonders. She whispered, “We’re going someplace tonight, and you are going to be just as friendly to the people there as you were to my mother’s Greek friends.”
I was feeling pretty cocky about my progress. “Sure, Daf, anywhere you want.”
After we’d slept off the jet lag, done a little shopping, and had a bite to eat, we hopped on one of those wonderful old red double-deckered London buses. Daffy still hadn’t told me where she was taking me. At each stop, I’d press my nose against the window and ask, “Here?”
“Nope.”
“Here?”
“Nope.”
The next stop was in front of the Playboy Club on Park Lane.
“Here?” I joked.
“Yes!”
I held on to my seat. “Oh no, Daffy. You’re not getting me in there.”
She yanked me up. “Oh yes, I am.”
“Do they allow women without bunny tails in?” I mumbled as she dragged me to the door.
As the maitre’d wound his way through the crowd taking us to our table, I noticed a number of men momentarily ungluing their eyes from the bunnies’ fluffy tails and silk ears to look at us. Emboldened by the confidence I’d felt in the Greek restaurant, I stood up straight, brushed my hair back, and even smiled at a few of them.
One of the Playboy bunnies must have noticed my excitement. While doing the graceful “bunny dip” serving our drinks, she whispered to me, “I have an extra pair of bunny ears in the back if you’d like to wear them.”
Daffy gasped when I gleefully placed them on my head. “Hey, cool it,” she said. “Now you’re going too far!”
I really was, and it was thrilling. I had gone from a scared, masked rabbit timidly taking kids trick-or-treating to a blatant bunny showing off in the Playboy Club. I wanted to dance and shout, “I’m free—I’m no longer shy!”
At that moment, I started planning a little surprise party for Daffy’s birthday. Me, a party giver? That was the confirmation that I’d won the battle!
Meanwhile, throughout the evening, several men came to our table to chat. While they were ordering drinks for us, Daffy leaned over and whispered, “Go, girl. Nobody would ever guess you were shy.”
I winked at her, “I’ll just keep faking it ’til I make it.” But I wasn’t faking it anymore.
Think of it as the SATs, the bar exam, or a board certification. There are exams to become an R.N., CPA, Ph.D., even a GHRS (Ghosts and Hauntings Researcher). So why not an exam to prove you are no longer a Shy? You are now a certified “Sure.” There are two parts: (1) show off by doing something silly and (2) then give yourself a Graduation Party.
If you don’t succeed at first, don’t be disheartened. Simply go back and repeat some of the ShyBusters. Soon, you, too, will be wearing your graduation cap, although probably not silk bunny ears. Choose a baseball cap, beret, helmet, turban, tiara, or just an invisible crown. You will silently and ecstatically shout, I’m free! I’m no longer shy! Nobody will hear you, of course, just your new confident self. And that’s the most important person in the world.