You are reading this right now because I signed up for The Rib at the activities fair two years ago. Though I fully intended to sign up for this club at the activities fair, a lot of times that’s not how things work out for me. In fact, activities fairs are usually bad places for me to be because I have a lot of trouble saying no to people who ask me to sign up for things. Long story short, if you ask me to sign up for something, I’ll sign up. This tendency has gotten me into some trouble over the years.
My freshman year, I ended up signing up for a lot of things that I either didn’t understand or could not actually take part in. For example, I accidentally signed up for a group specifically for Jewish students. Let me be clear, you had to be Jewish to join this group. I am not Jewish. But, in the heat of the moment, when the guy behind the table hands me the clipboard I just start signing right up. I’ve already got most of my email down when he says, “you’re Jewish, right?” My heart sinks. I don’t want this guy to know that I don’t even read the descriptions on the tables…what kind of idiot agrees to sign up for affinity groups that they don’t identify with?! So, I just finish writing my email and hope I fly under the radar. I hit up a bunch of other tables in the same row, also signing up for some salsa dancing classes and an anime club or something.
Two days later, one of the Christian student groups is knocking on my dorm room door. I open the door and they say, “Hello there, you signed up on our info sheet to talk about your relationship to Jesus and here we are!” In this moment I am thinking that I was forced through seven years of Catholic Sunday School and I do not want to talk any more about my relationship to Jesus. So I’m standing here, thinking, “Oh man, I gotta get out of this,” and the first thing I can think of to say is: sorry, I’m Jewish. Now, we’ve already established that I’m not Jewish. But they don’t know that, and I’ve got my own weakness on my side – because as evidence to back up this statement, I’m on the Listserv for a Jewish affinity group. Luckily, the Christian group doesn’t fact-check this and they don’t come back. And the reason they don’t fact-check is because it does not make sense for me to lie about being Jewish. The logical, normal person thing to do would’ve been to just tell the nice people that I signed up blindly at their table and wasn’t actually interested in speaking about my relationship with Jesus.
Anyways, I spend the rest of the year finding out about all the organizations I signed up for through surprise Listserv emails. And it would probably be okay if the fallout from my inability to say no to a proffered clipboard with a line for my email was limited to activities fairs. But my compulsive signing also comes into play when I am stopped by a person on the street. “Hello, do you have a minute to talk about global warming?” “Do you have two minutes to talk about orphaned kittens?” “Ma’am, do you care at all about the fate of the free world?”
Gets me every time. My inbox and spam folders are littered with emails about carbon emissions, baby animals, GMO produce, and crowd-funded petitions. I am nominally a member of so many college clubs and organizations that it would be physically impossible for me to attend all the meetings that I’m informed about through Listservs. But I keep signing up. Maybe one rainy afternoon on the streets of Providence the soon-to-be love of my life will hand me a clipboard and the rest will be history. Alternately, perhaps I’ll sign up for something and find out it has always been my passion and my path in life will become instantly clear. Or, against all odds, someday I might grow up and just say “No, thank you.”