I'm sure you've probably noticed by now that I am an awkward person. It's the way I've been my whole life, just bouncing from one embarrassing moment to the next. I don't know why it surprises me so much, then, when something happens and I find myself doing something ridiculous. You'd think I would be used to it, but yesterday was the day I finally decided to just expect awkwardness and embrace it when it comes.
My day started off with a sign. It was actually a blatantly obvious sign in the form of a Facebook ad. You know how Facebook tailors your ads to fit your personal needs? Mine are usually really accurate - there are a lot of scuba diving ads and some kids' stuff in there. Yesterday, the first ad I saw said "It's ok to be awkward." Yeah, told you it was obvious! I laughed and then promptly forgot about it.
Yesterday afternoon, I went up to the community college to drop off some flyers to advertise my fit club. Apparently you have to get everything approved and stamped by the Student Activities office before you can hang it on a bulletin board, so I wandered around for a while looking for the office. I finally found it and went in, only to find that it was the tiniest office ever and packed full of a bunch of people doing random projects.
There were a couple of people working on enormous papier-mache globes, and there was someone else elbowing his way through the crowd with a bunch of boards under his arm. Three or four people were standing in front of the desk, talking to the guy who needed to approve my flyers. Everyone paused for a second when I walked in, and then carried on with their business. The general chaos filling the tiny space was making my head feel a little fuzzy. I don't know what it is about crowds, but they make me lose my mind. I can't concentrate on what I'm doing, and I lose the ability to communicate like a sane human being. I stumble over my words and kind of mumble, so I have to repeat myself a lot. I usually can't hear what anyone else is saying, so I ask "What? Sorry, what was that?" a few times. That's bad enough on its own.
I did all of the above yesterday, but I didn't stop there. Nope, I'm an over-achiever, so I went ahead and topped the charts for awkward moments. After finally getting my flyers handed over and put in the pile for approval, I turned around to leave, but I turned around too quickly because I was in a hurry to get out of there. I tripped the guy behind me, and he went flying into the counter. I started apologizing and went to help him up, but when I straightened up, I somehow managed to crash into the guy carrying the boards under his arm, and he swung around to avoid me, hitting the girl on the other side of him. It was like a cartoon. I leveled half the office in about three seconds. What do you even say when something like that happens? I made a lame joke along the lines of, "Oops, guess I need to watch where I'm going!" and everyone stared at me like I was an idiot for stating the obvious.
But, really, was I the idiot? Or was the guy behind me standing way too close? And why was someone carrying boards around the room for so long? Put them down somewhere! I don't know, I'm sure that it was pretty much entirely my fault, but I feel like maybe my social awkwardness sometimes has to do with the rest of society being awkward.
Whatever the case may be, I'm going to embrace stuff like this. Like Facebook told me, "It's ok to be awkward." And whatever Facebook says must be true, right?
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