A shocking lack of self-awareness
So one of my friends, whom I won't name on the Internet but whose name is frequently preceded by the adjective "Crazy," has, several times over the last couple of years, made a point of lecturing me on how much more friendly, social, a "people person," outgoing, etc. I am than he is. Upon careful consideration, his argument contains a few minor flaws. Let us examine a representative example.
The last time we met he gave me this lecture. I had come to join him at The Highlander, which was one stop of a stag night, and when I found him he was kneeling next to a table, chatting animatedly with the four who were seated there. I assumed they were part of the bachelor party and waited patiently for him to disengage so I could let him know I had arrived. He was, as usual, enthusiastically happy to see me, introduced me to several people whom I promptly forgot, and eventually settled down to chat over a pitcher while the party left for the Clermont.
Very quickly he started pushing me to chat up one of the young women at the aforementioned table. (He's also a bit pushy about my single life.) I demurred, asking why they had not left with the rest of the party, and that's when I found out they were not part of the group. In fact, they were complete strangers to whom he had decided to introduce himself. He then began the lecture about how much more social I am than he is. He was wildly drunk, and I was hoping to calm him down, so I distracted him and did not point out that I cannot imagine inserting myself into a group of strangers like that. Fortunately, drunkenness meant his attention span was crap, so eventually I was able to get him out of The Highlander and head back to his hotel.
On the way back, he hit the "I'm hungry!" stage of drunkenness, and rather than drive out to a Waffle House I took him to a bar on the ground floor of his hotel. Before we even crossed the threshold, he had heard the music, seen the waitress, run in and taken her hand, and started dancing with her. We could have been kicked out, but she took it in stride. After he got some food in him and calmed down enough to introduce himself by talk rather than waltz (which he doesn't know), he only struck up conversations with three other groups of complete strangers.
That story is a good example, but hardly unique. None of that evening was atypical behaviour for him. What confuses me is how someone like this can argue that he is an antisocial, misanthropic loner during the pause between introducing himself to complete strangers, and do so without experiencing any sort of mental disconnect.
Perhaps I have a blind spot, but how can someone be this blatantly, explicitly, completely self-unaware?