Drowning Nor Waving

Not only have I never used the introvert card in that situation, it never occurred to me that I could. When I was little, people's $%&$%&@!!! parents were always trying to "draw me out" and "include me," and when they discovered that I was not in fact shy but rather not interested in what the other kids were doing, that never went well. "Shy" was okay; a little shy girl with blonde braids and great big brown eyes was someone they could envision pulling out of her shell until at the end of the day she was shouting and laughing with the others and having a great time. But "shy" comes with connotations of "scared" and "nervous" for a lot of parents, and it comes with the idea that the person in question would get used to the others over time and be less shy with them. Whereas discovering, even without the label "introvert," that I was neither scared nor nervous, just content with myself, did not go well. Ever. So I never introduced it with that vocabulary as an adult, either.