What People Think When They Think of You

When "Thinking of you" doesn't mean what you think it means.

Last Sunday at church, a woman turned around, leaned forward, lowered her voice, and said, “I’m sure you hear things like this all the time, but—”

Oh, no. Here it comes.

“—I thought about you this week.”

Poor woman.

Experience has taught me that when someone says, "Ruth, I thought about you this week," whatever’s coming next will not be normal.

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It’s never, "Ruth, I passed that coffee shop we like, remembered our happy memories there together, and smiled."

Instead, it’s "I rolled down the escalator at the mall in front of my crush" or "A mouse fell out of the air vent directly onto my head" or "I got my arm caught in a pneumatic tube and immediately thought of you."

Of course, I have no one to blame but myself.

Consider, for a moment, my track record.

I’m a woman who

• Panicked over finding a dead body in the woods that turned out to be a tree root.

• Talked so much about potatoes during a speed dating event that I got dubbed The Potato Girl.

• Strolled down a boardwalk with an entire slice of processed American cheese stuck to my butt.

• Spilled water on a stack of books at one of my own book signings before I’d signed a single one.

• Lay down at the top of a bridge and started crying in the middle of a marathon.

• Had my whole shirt fly up, exposing my torso, while wrestling a flyaway umbrella during strong winds directly in front of a plate-glass window full of people looking out while waiting for a storm to let up in Seoul, South Korea.

• Walked face-first into a closet full of shelves.

• Got laughed at by a waitress at a diner in France because she overheard a member of our friend group telling the story of me tripping and falling in the middle of the night so loudly and cartoonishly that it woke her up from a dead sleep.

• Fell off a stone wall at Fort McHenry National Monument and Historic Shrine in Baltimore, Maryland, in front of a tour group of Spanish-speaking sightseers, humiliating and badly injuring myself in the process.

• Sat on an entire plate of food at a party.

Not only have I done all these things in real life, but I’ve also publicly told these stories.

So perhaps it’s no surprise that when someone says, “Ruth, I thought of you this week,” what comes next will be embarrassing, painful, or completely unhinged.

This trend has been going on for a while, and I haven’t always been sure how to feel about it.

I mean, I love attention, so I’m always happy to hear people are thinking of me.

But at what cost?

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While discussing this dynamic, my friend Ashley helped me understand it better.

“You’re a safe space,” she asserted. “A compassionate compatriot of clumsiness. You help people laugh at their fumbles.”

This after telling the story of falling up some stairs at a vacation rental and immediately thinking of me.

“I wonder if Ruth has also fallen on the stairs. She’ll definitely tell me, if so.”

She actually makes a really solid point, offering a perspective I’d not previously considered.

Nobody feels shy about telling me their embarrassing stories because, almost without fail, I’ve done something equally bad—if not worse.

It’s the sort of one-upsmanship people actually crave.

And I’m here for it.

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This sort of thing is why, when I told my parents I had signed a contract to write a book called Socially Awkward, my mom, without hesitation, objected, “But you’re too young to write a memoir!”

An understandable reaction, given my track record.

But this book is not a memoir.

Instead, it’s both a call to push through discomfort and tackle tough topics and a resource that provides tools for doing just that.

“We need to talk.”

It’s hard to imagine a more panic-inducing statement. Why? These four little words generally herald the arrival of a truly awkward conversation.

Though the very thought of difficult conversations makes us cringe, evidence suggests they’re necessary—even beneficial. If only it weren’t all so awkward.

In Socially Awkward, Ruth Buchanan encourages readers to take heart, push through discomfort, tackle tough topics, speak up when it matters, and engage big ideas together. In doing so, they can experience personal development, build stronger relationships, help foster healthy faith communities, and serve the culture.

And yes, along the way, I do tell some truly awkward stories.

Because why let good material go to waste?

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