I was told recently by someone that as an introvert I couldn’t speak to the experiences of an extrovert, that I don’t have the experience base from which to speak. Actually, I do. Here’s the thing about introverts and extroverts, we’re all on a spectrum from full-blown introversion on one end, to total extroversion on the other. Most of us fall somewhere in between, a mixture of the sensitive, thoughtful Uncle Sagawa, and an outgoing and hale fellow-well-met Uncle Vanya. Some of us are fully one or the other, though in times by choice we function in the realm of the other.

I remember as a child my experiences in the classroom, and I believe it is a fairly common occurrence: my teachers were excellent, intelligent, and gentle like a familiar aunt. I was struck by their relationships with their students, and with me in particular. As an I introvert I was reticent and held back in class participation. The extrovert kids were always talking and boisterous, and their hands always shot up first whenever the teacher asked a question. Occasionally, I was called on, but not like the active kids. This is the kind of thing that makes an indelible mark on you, how you’re treated by the teacher. I think it wasn’t deliberate or necessarily conscious that teachers favored the extrovert students. It’s understandable. This is why they went into teaching, to have a student excited with learning, and to have all those lesson plans actually work. They are the favored students, and those of us as introverts routinely placed after the winners. I don’t fault my teachers at all, it was what it was.

My response to this coming in second nudged me to find some ways out of the situation, and I started studying the active kids for why they were favored. I began first to act like they did, did what they did, just imitated their behaviors. I was as smart as they were, knew as much as they did, so I started throwing my hand up as quickly as they did. I never felt secure as they seemed always to be, but my secret started to work and I began to be recognized as much as they were. As a full-blown introvert, I had developed my creds as an extrovert, albeit an anxious one.

I don’t know how common my experiences were compared with other introverts, or from the other end, if total extroverts delved into their inner realm in search of I wonder what? Here’s my thinking: I believed that all artists first of all, of whatever feather, whether painter, sculptor, ceramicist, musician, or author, all artists are introverts. The inner experience is the realm from which all creative urges emanate, and introverts are the more familiar with and comfortable in going there. When a true extrovert emerges as an artist, it is because she/he broke with their natural inclination and probed the world of the heart. That does work.

So, do I as an introvert have the treads to speak of the world of the extrovert? Yes, I believe I do. I am basically an introvert on the 100% end of the spectrum, but I have mastered not only the external behaviors of an extrovert, but why extroverts are moved to operate in the external world, and what rewards salt their motives. Whether on the extreme end of introversion, or that of full extroversion, it is all the human experience, and both characters can and do touch the worlds of the other. I am both an introvert, but as well an extrovert with a rich life commanding both worlds. If one is conscious of this, a grand mixture of personality is possible.

Now, I’d like to talk ab bit of my latest book, titled, “Journey of a Bent Mind: Confessions of an Introvert.” This I self-published through Kindle press, a subsidiary associated with Amazon,com in 2019. It delves into defining and exploration of the introvert mind. Through narrative commentaries I probe the definitive qualities of introversion. You will not, however, find a delineated definition of an introvert, because we are each unique and fall somewhere in our place on the spectrum of Introversion-Extroversion. And, one man’s introvert is another’s stranger. I believe, however, that this narrative word-imagery gives an inner perspective of the introvert. This is definition by imagery, and hopefully rings true for introverts, as well as you extroverts with your subway pass into the subterranean world of the heart.

“Journey” centers around eight narratives, which are the introductions to eight small publications of dad jokes I completed in collaboration my four grandchildren Casey, Venice, Xander, and Teiya. It started when Casey asked me to tell him the world’s worst joke. I asked him why the world’s worst joke, and he replied he thought it would be funny.

I apologized that I didn’t know any jokes, and certainly none I could call the world’s worst, but I’d think one up for him. It didn’t take long, and I shared the following with him: “Why did the cow want to go to Hollywood? Because she wanted to be in the moo-vies.”

The grandkids thought that was funny, and thus began a joint project with me writing puns, they drawing illustrations for ones of the funnier lot they liked. Within less than a year we self-published our first book of dad jokes under the title, “The World’s 101 Worst Cow Jokes.” There followed over the course of several years, seven more singlet volumes of dad jokes, each with illustrations by my four artist grandchildren.

For “Journeys of a Bent Mind,” I took the introductions of each of the eight books, and drew up a follow-up narrative to explain and amplify the premise presented by each introduction, and included a sampling of 20 puns from each book to add flavor in defining introversion. In reading through “Journeys,” your travels will take you through a world of word-images and thoughts and plays-on-words, that will hopefully strike some familiar chords and memory traces of what your own experiences have been along the spectrum.