50 Introverts Reveal The Incredible Lengths They've Gone To Avoid People

When I was a kid and I was over at a friends house playing, if they asked me to sleep over I would call my mum and ask permission, when she said yes I responses "oh no, why not? Please mum!" And she knew that was my signal I wanted to come home!

I dropped a class because a guy asked me out.

I got married so I have someone else to go into stores and make food orders over the phone.

Use the kids as my excuse.
"Aw, she's getting tired, it's almost her bedtime, we should probably go now"
"Oh, the baby just fell asleep. I guess I can't come over now. Darn!"
I love them.

Over a decade ago (when it was very unpopular) I grew a big beard, got myself big glasses which tend to slay down my nose and kept practicing both - long stare without blinking and expressionless face. Oh, and here and there I've mentioned few "accidents" with unpleasant people which try to assault me and what happened to them. Since I'm 6ft. 2in, with a body build of walrus, now all I do to avoid small talk, is look at annoyers with irritated glance over my glasses and so-called "Poles face". People tend to keep away from me, either from fear or just in case. Best part? In reality, when I'm with few trusted and loved people, I'm cheerful and talkative as hell. Go figure...

Cannot count the amount of times I have hidden in my bed, literally not moving and barely breathing, to avoid the attention of a parent or housemate.

I'm also at expert level of faking being asleep 😭

I hate answering the phone if it's someone I don't know. One day, I was busy, and I forgot myself, and picked up the phone. I immediately realized what I had done, and in this case, it was some credit company, or a salesman...I don't know. They asked if I was the homeowner. I said "No". They asked if the homeowner was there. Again, "No."
"Well, are you the wife of the homeowner?"
"No. I'm the babysitter."
They asked for my name for their records, to show that they had actually made the call, and not wanting to give my own name, I panicked and started to give my sister's name (Janice). After the "Ja"...I paused, drawing the syllable out, and ...quick thinking on MY part, changed the pronunciation of the second syllable, so the name came out as... "Jaaaah...NYCE" with a long I . I knew right away that it didn't sound like a real name, but maybe something foreign...so I 'covered' myself by continuing the conversation with a heavy accent from some unknown country that I made up to keep up the ruse. I just kept talking as this random person of no known origin until the person just quietly hung up on me. I just put my head down on the desk and sat there for a very long time...

I have a 300 minute cell phone plan, 7 days to renew and 256 minutes left... most of the minutes used are text messages. I hate phones. Disconnecting my house phone brought me so much peace. I love to type talk, but rarely speak. I babysit my niece and nephews (talking to kids doesn't bother me). If the kids get to chatty, I turn on cartoons and they get mesmerized :P. My entire family are extroverts. If I had something to say, I wouldn't be heard anyway. My husband was very social, he never shut up, so I didn't have to talk in social situations. Unfortunately, he died. His family lives with me and I do talk with them occasionally. Mostly with my brother in law. In the mornings, I lay in bed, waiting for everyone to leave the house before I get up. I am a morning person, I just can't stand the morning nonsensical chatter. Yet I'll discuss life and theory all through the night. I love an intelligent conversation. When people I don't feel comfortable with attempt to talk to me, I look them straight in the eye and say "If you spent 5 minutes in my brain, you would have to be committed." The odd thing is, that with the right people you can't shut me up. Life is strange, antidepressants let me go shopping.

I recently went on holiday to Bali, and quite a few people I knew were going over at the same time, staying not far from me. The usual promises of ''we'll catch up when we get over there''. I knew that catching up with them would involve drinking silly amounts of alcohol and just talking shit, so I faked that I had gone to another region of the island instead on a whim, and just had to be careful if I ventured out that I didn't go to places they were likely to be.

I've pretended to be hard of hearing so people keep it short with me at least.

Left the Hardees me and my coworkers were eating lunch at to go sit in a graveyard.

Use studying as literally every excuse ever...

I was in a train and a lady constantly wanted to start a conversation with me , so I just pretended that I was talking on the phone for 1 whole hour .
I was just making up my own sentences , and it probably didn't make any sense , but it saved me from small talk .

I once spent my recess at school in the toilet cubicle because I was being bullied and I have extreme social anxiety.

I was driving up to the store, saw someone I knew walk in, I didn’t even stop. I just kept driving to another store. I didn’t want to do small talk with them. And I knew it’d be a lot of small talk because something new just happened in their life that they’d bring up and want to talk about.

I spent a lot of time in the bathroom as a kid just because I knew it was a place where I could read and no one would bother me.
In college I would keep my dorm room locked and if someone knocked on my door and I just did not want to deal with it right then I'd pretend not to be there. I usually would be sitting at my desk with headphones on, so it's not like they would hear anything. I'd stay perfectly still and wait for them to go away. The best part of this is that I found out later that I wasn't being as sneaky as I thought I was and at least one of my friends knew I did this. Oh god the embarrassment.
Now that I'm an Adult or whatever I work in an office and I always take my lunch breaks in my locked car. I consider lunch to be my break from talking to people bc my coworkers are very chatty. I also wait until I know the office kitchen is empty to retrieve my food from the fridge. Sometimes I have to wait until like 2pm. Idk what I'm gonna do when it gets too cold for me to hide in my car... Probably just stop taking lunch breaks.

So I was supposed to go to a female friend's house for the first time (who's actually very close to me) but since my parents are very conservative I told them I'm going for a movie with my friends and the tickets are already booked so they can't say no. Next day when I'm supposed to go, I get super anxious thinking it'd be awkward, cancel on her, but still had to go out because of the 'movie. Now I'm out with no one to go to or no where to go with very minimal cash for around 4 hours. That day sucked.

My sophomore lockers in high school were down a set of stairs, which were pretty awful and a general death zone. I had gone down to get something from my locker, and when I went back, I heard voices and I paused. I turned the other way and walked up the massive, steep hill on the side of the school to avoid anyone seeing me. It was winter and snowing too.

I don't like to talk while I'm in any public transport, but when I was in college some girl that lived near my place insisted on siting with me and talk about some really weird fanfiction that she wrote. I would stay in college 15 extra minutes to avoid her, and if that didn't work and she still happened to catch the same bus, then I would get off the bus lying about forgeting something or going somewhere else.

I went to a conference for two days, at which I knew no one. So, instead of joining a random table of other conference-goers ton eat the delicious food the conference provided, I walked about 20 minutes away to a cafe and bought my own lunch.