I Am Nervousness!

Nerves, this is something I’m sure everyone has suffered with, (except maybe Bruce Forsyth) whether it’s because of a gig, a first day at school, asking a tremendously pretty girl to the year 6 dance or for those “sports people” who’re reading this; (of which I’m sure there a only a few) a big game, everyone has had nerves.
In all honesty the idea for an article about nerves came to me just after I did in fact do my first gig as a stand up comic, but the idea has been pushed back because of the holidays.
The thing is I suffer from nerves really badly; I am much like a small dog at the vets when it comes to a lot of things, attempting to escape by any means possible. But unfortunately, like the cold, hard, rubber gloved inspection of the puppy’s insides, a lot of these situations are unavoidable.
Certain situations (most actually) put me in such a position where my brain goes into overdrive and begins to work at every possible conversational pathway that the situation may present, not only does this make me do a very questionable face, it causes me to miss vital parts of conversation, which might aid me in the situation I am replicating ten times over in my mind and it sometimes causes, what I like to call; Cognitive Release of Accidental Premonitions (or CRAP) which is when I will mix up my inner conversations with the actual conversation, causes a giant confusion. Causing me to be thinking: “Hmm, and what if their pet doesn’t like me” while having a conversation about homework with a lecturer causing a situation not dissimilar to this:
“Joe what will you do if the printer doesn’t work again?”
“I’ll just slap the dog.”
Blank faces all around because I have no idea I said it.
So, this is one of the reasons I get nervous about most situations, because in preparing for a really intimidating situation, say meeting a girl’s parents, I slip up in a less intimidating circumstance, say, meeting the girl’s dog.
It’s why I never really engaged with sports (What? No, You jest surely) because I would get too worried about little things, like whether I was wearing the right socks, then the ball rolls past and woops, Joe’s off the team. And it’s a surprise that I succeed at all in academic situations, since I am always really worried about the small, insignificant detail that I missed, probably because of a CRAP. Luckily, Because my brain constantly has my back, I’ve managed to create within myself certain nervous situation coping mechanism, such as the quick run through of conversations, or actions, but one I feel I excel at is a particularly useful one.
Now, I am not one to blow my own trumpet, because I have no musical talent, and I don’t own a trumpet, in fact that phrase could not be less useful for me, but social situations tend to be my strong point, the thing is, the only reason I do so well in them is because of my most prominent nervous situation coping mechanism; humour.
When I meet a new person, or group, I tend to open with a joke, or attempt at humour, not because I want to be “top dog” or “class clown” (Dogs’ breath smell and clowns are creepy) but because I don’t want it to be awkward or weird. I’ll attempt to make a joke because it lightens the mood, it relaxes people and it makes people feel better about the entire situations. It’s the same way with social figures, by making jokes, or being funny they are attempting to connect and become more friendly with you, for instance politicians try at humour, and everyone has had the teacher that tries to make everyone laugh whether it’s using taboo language (fuck, shit, boobies) or terrible, terrible jokes, “My pens run out sir” “better run after it then” ba-dun-cha.
This is all I’m doing when I make jokes, I’m just getting over the nerves of the situation, which is not all that great when you’re trying to be serious “Sir, you’re being accused of driving under the influence, please recite the alphabet backwards” “but that’s hard to do even when you ARE sober!”. So the more jokes I make the more nervous I am feeling.
Awkward silences are a prime example of this, you know those moments when all conversation disappears and the conversation dies? These “conversation killers” are great fun for me now that I’ve realised I can use humour to defuse them, and even if all else fails I am determined not to have that awkward silence, even it means directly referencing said silence.
So, nerves are something we all have to deal with, something that plagues most of us some of the time, and some of us most of the time, but they are quite easy to avoid, or cope with, all it takes is practise. And if you can, I advise heavily on using humour, it’s the most effective nerve deterrent, and if you are using it to make an awkward “in-laws” meeting easier, make sure their dad isn’t dead inside like Robert De Niro’s character in “Meet the parents”

Joe Strange

The Crack’d Pot, now with 50% less in-jokes!