Out of context [89/100]

I used to work with a designer — her name is Winnie. The first time I met her, she did what society would call abundantly oversharing, but soon I found out that’s just Winnie.

Over a year or so, we became good friends. As an introvert, I don’t usually hang out that much with the majority of people I would consider friends. There’s a lot of mental overhead in finding time to clean up the house, mustering up energy to be appropriately social, and then recovering from the being social. But there are a handful of people that are somehow exceptions — I don’t feel pressured to clean up, and they can come over anytime on short notice and with whatever frequency and I don’t feel tired. I feel happy. Winnie became one of those exceptions.

We had a very odd relationship — though she is older than me, she started to call me “mom” at work, which was very confusing to me and to everyone else. She understands me — I grew up in an Asian family where positive feedback was scarce but I knew I was loved. And she understands all the intricate nuances and weird baggage that comes with that.

One day, I walked by her in the hallway. She was wearing a shirt that I hadn’t seen her wear before, and it was a nice shirt.

“I like your shirt,” I said.

She replied, without skipping a beat, “Mom, you sound like a serial killer.”

This is titled “Out of context” because whenever I tell anyone this weird story, Winnie complains that I tell it out of context, and people will think she is mean, but the truth is, there isn’t much more context than that. We didn’t have an ongoing inside joke about serial killers, or anything like that. I told her I was going to write this, and she said “the context is knowing you first!!” I’m not sure what that means, so I tried to provide some additional context about our weird relationship, but maybe Winnie Lim will respond to this post to explain further.