How anti-social am I?

I'm so anti-social that my mom actually introduced me to my own neighbor the other day. That reads like a really bad punchline to a joke, right? Except it's not. It's my life. {Sigh}

My mom was outside with the boys while they rode bikes in our cul-de-sac and I was inside getting dinner ready. When I came out, she was chatting with two of my neighbors. She might as well have said, "neighbor, this is my daughter, the hermit."

I promise I had already met the neighbor my mom thought she needed to introduce me to, but we're not friends. I wouldn't even say we're neighborly, aside from a simple wave in passing, so I can kind of see why my mom thought we needed an introduction in case either of us had awkwardly forgot each other's name or something. But I do know his name and we've briefly chatted on a few occasions before.

The truth is, we've lived in our house for over 7 years in a pretty family-oriented neighborhood, and I've made almost no effort to get to know any of my neighbors. Granted, in our cul-de-sac, two neighbor couples are much older than us with presumably very little in common and one neighbor couple is about our age but doesn't have kids which would make a friendship a bit more awkward (in my own mind full of excuses, of course). But there's no excuse for not being more friendly with our next door neighbors. They're about our age, graduated from the same college as me and they have a 2-year-old son with daughter on the way. In fact, her name is Becky and their son's name is Aidan. Freaky, right? On paper, we should totally be BFFs!

Honestly, I'm not trying to be anti-social. I'm just flat out shy. Always have been and probably always will be. It feels like such a curse. I've always had trouble making friends. All throughout school, I only ever had a pretty small group of close friends. And when I first started at the job I'm at now, I'm pretty sure my coworkers thought I was either mute or completely stuck up because I never socialized or talked. That's probably what my neighbors think of me, and I hate that. I really want to change, but it's hard for me to step out of my comfort zone and put myself out on a limb like that.

But kind of like with the whole confrontation thing, I know I need to try to get over it for the sake of my kids. See, if I'm more social, then they can be more social with play dates and stuff. They need that. I don't want them to share my curse of being shy. Plus, it has other horrible side effects, like a paralyzing fear of public speaking. They DEFINITELY don't need to inherit that fear from me!

So am I the only one who hasn't made friends with the neighbors? I'm gonna do it soon. I swear. (Aw, my mom will be so proud, haha!)