Why does my anxiety make me sound like Princess Peach?

Ok, this story is only going to make sense if you have every played Super Smash Bros.

What a weird intro.

But let me back it on up. In my early career days working at Home Hardware, there was a Beauti-tone paint promotion where we were all given t-shirts and told to pick our favourite paint colour. Me, being the geek I am, selected the colour "Voldemort." Yes, ladies and gents and non-binary individuals, there is a colour called Voldemort. It is not black or green but a deep eggplant purple. (This is not necessarily relevant to the story, but whatever.)

Now, my uniform had this word jotted across the back in permanent marker 'my favourite paint colour is Voldemort.'

You also have to know this about me, even though I work very socially in retail, I avoid people like Covid-19. Too soon? Okay. I avoid people like the plague.

I'm walking into my condo building and see two men walking towards the building from a different direction. So to avoid any social interaction I book it to the side door and pretty much run to the mailbox so I can grab anything in there and get inside. Ah, but stress is a great fumbler of keys I've found. I did not beat them to the door but had my back to the entryway in the dwindling hope of avoiding conversation, when one of them pipes up, "Hey. Nice paint colour."

I whip around, startled like a deer in the headlights, even though I knew this would happen. Drop my keys on the floor and utter, "ahhaha yaaa." Like the sound Peach makes when she body checks Kirby off the fucking map in Super Smash Bros.

I wish you could hear that noise because I swear that description doesn't even do it justice.

But the two men thought I was a regular ole psychopath and continued on their merry way, while I slunk inside and dwelt in eternal embarrassment.