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Dealing with 21st Century Awkwardness

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Just the other day Denyse, Clarissa and I were talking about really awkward situations, and Denyse raised this darn awkward situation:

Imagine you are walking down this long corridor, let's say outside some classrooms. Then all of a sudden you see this person walking towards you from the other end of the corridor, and you sort of know the person but is not that close. What will you do?
  1. Look left, right, up and down until you are within 1 meter range of that person and go like, "Hey! I didn't see you!"
  2. Wave at the person and keep waving till you walk past each other, completed with goddamned awkward smiles.
  3. Wave at the person once, then look at the ground like it is suddenly made of diamonds and walk past the person with your head bowed.
  4. Fortunately you are with a friend so you turn to him or her eagerly and babble nonsense with double the usual enthusiasm just to avoid looking at the approaching person.
  5. Whip out your handphone and start looking at random pictures in your phone, like maybe your cat scratching its chin or something.
  6. OH NO, NO HANDPHONE! You pretend to forget something and turn around and walk in the other direction at twice the speed, cringing all the way.
We laughed so hard when we were discussing all these possible options to do in the face of real awkwardness, and I decided to double the awkwardness with...

The approaching person is your crush/ someone you are just super awkward to be around.

Like maybe an old classmate of yours which you have really acknowledge for almost 3 to 4 years, and vice versa.  Or maybe someone you just had a disagreement with.

Ugh. I just feel awkward even to think of such a situation.

I realise that there is another awkward situation that I am most often put in, and that is at the bus stop, waiting for the bus to take me home.

Imagine you recently have this quarrel with your close friend, and you two are like cold shouldering each other, then you arrive at the bus stop and you see that friend waiting for bus. Are you going to approach and say hi or stand far away behind her and pretend to be supremely interested in your phone? Jesus, that just happened to me recently, and even worst I was the innocent person in front. So I didn't even know that there was this awkward presence behind me till I happened to turn around and see Sluggy scrutinizing her Sony Xperia so hard that you would think she could be willing it to turn into something else.

Oh yeah, Sluggy and I have sort of drifted apart lately, and it is a long story, and I swear I won't bore you guys with my life's unpleasant dramas. Only funny and ridiculous ones shall be shared.

That realization that she was there made me awkward too so I turned back to the front and determinedly not look back. And the worst thing is that her bus came before mine, and she had to stride forward determinedly and not look back at all, boarding the bus, chattering to her new classmate (and looking rather awkward I might say) and smiling a bit too brightly.

The same thing goes when we pass each other in school. I would turn to Denyse and Clarissa and start smiling awkwardly and chattering about something totally random, and those two would immediately cotton on and give me this look:

"I see what you did there."

 And since Denyse and Clarissa have a mix of hilarity and evilness in them, they would start nudging each other and giggling and waggling their eyebrows at each other and then beam at me innocently, all the while sending me into waves of panic by saying things like,

"We should go over and say hi!"

"HEYYYYYY ________!!!" (in a hushed tone)

Gosh, I swear my heart stops each time such a thing happens.

Personally, I have always find bus stops at school a pit of awkwardness. Especially for the one that we are currently using. To give you all a better idea, I drew a sketch of it:

The bus stop that I use after school
It isn't the most brilliant sketch ever, but well it will do. Some explanation before we begin our awkward lecture:

  • Blue Arrow: the direction in which people are walking to the bus stop from school
  • Red Arrow: direction of the traffic flow
  • Orange Circles 1, 2 and 3 are possible places to stand while waiting for a bus

 Anyway, I decided that the thing that makes standing at the bus stop really awkward is the fact that the direction of the people flow and the traffic flow with respect to the bus stop is the same, and when you are waiting for the bus, staring intently in the horizon, sometimes it looks like you are staring at the people walking in.

I shall now explain why all 3 options of standing are awkward:

Position 1
Position 1 is like the forefront of the crowd waiting at the bus stop, and the direction where everyone will be staring at while they look for their buses to come. So it is like you are under the scrutiny of every person there and if you do something terribly embarrassing like scratching your head continuously or have some stains on your skirt/pants, damn that is sort of awkward.

Besides, you are nearest to where the incoming people are coming from, and imagine someone whom you are awkward with comes in and the first person she/he is going to see is going to be you and you two will have to reenact the Awkward Corridor Scene all over again.

Position 2
You are in the middle of the crowd. You are like staring in the direction of  half the people in front of you and have half the people staring into your back. So no matter where you turn, there is a chance of making eye contact with other people. Which is like awkward.

But the good thing is that you are most likely concealed amidst the crowd so approaching awkwardities can't see you that well. Cheers.

Position 3
So far my favourite position, because you are not under the scrutiny of any one, and you are well conceal from potential awkward corridor situations, not to mention that we just have to stare hard at the road and avoid any potential eye contact with anyone happening to turn around. Cheers for spot 3.

Okay, all the awkwardness aside, I have more things to share with all of you. Just recently I had a really bad bout of bad luck, and while queueing up at the Italian food store, something horrendously disastrous occurred. 

There was this guy that just bought this plate of tomato spaghetti, and he had this fork balanced on the plate. I think he was trying to keep his wallet or something, and while doing so, the fork started to slip. He tried to reach out and grab the slipping fork by doing this odd jerking movement and that was when all the alarm bells started to go off in my head.

But the strangest thing about such a situation was that I sort of knew that the next thing that was going to happen was that he was going to spill his entire plate of spaghetti, possibly somewhere close to where I was standing, but I couldn't will myself to move away.

So it sort of happened in slow motion as he reached for his fork, missed, lost his hold on the plate of steaming spaghetti and the entire plate flopped to the ground with a resounding crash.

HALF OF IT WENT ONTO MY SHOES.

The horror of having pasta all over your favourite pair of shoes was indescribable, it was like this nightmare that you are trying to will yourself awake, but no you are stuck inside. It was not just me, Denyse had a little bit of it splattered onto her legs and her shoes/skirt, the dude in front of me (who let his friends cut the queue, hrrrmph!) had his pants stained, all because of that becursed pasta.

I suffered the most out of all the victims, because my entire pair of shoes was just caked in pasta sauce and disgustingness. The person who spilled the entire thing was pretty embarrassed (and there we go, awkward) and he barely managed to eke out a muttered apology before trying to get the pasta siphoned off the ground.

Personally, if it were me, I would have apologized more effusively to the unfortunate being upon whom my pasta landed upon, but no dude. This one just mumbled "sorry" and stared blankly at the pasta on the ground. Honestly, I was pretty mad with the person, and yes, while he did not do it intentionally (of course he didn't, he just lost his lunch!), the outcome of whether it was deliberate or unintentional was the same. I had to abandon my position in the queue to go wash my shoes instantly lest the smell stays, and thank god that this pair of shoes was synthetic leather with plastic covered tips, so when I ran it under water, most of the disgusting goo came out, and I had to use the hand soap to reduce the gross smell. That took close to 20 minutes of my break and I was still ranting when I was chomping on my mushroom pasta. Ugh. :/

Now I have this mini phobia of canteens and people with bowls of food in their hands.

Anyways, to end this off, I have to rant that minions are so freaking adorable. I mean, I have this huge craze over them, like right now. :3

Despicable Me 2 Minions

Isn't Dave so cute? (the 2 eyed minion! :D)

Look at the way they giggle!
Minion at the orientation day - wonderstruck expressions. :D
So long, bye guys!


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