On a scale from Taylor Swift to Kristen Stewart, how socially awkward are you? Personally, I’m more of a T-Swift type of awkward, you know the kind that gets really awkward when things don’t go as planned or when it gets suddenly too tense and uncomfortable for one to bear. I get sweaty palms, I stutter and I can’t look anyone in the eyes without feeling like a nervous wreck with a hysterical hyena laugh. And obviously my days (as anyone else’s I suppose) are just a succession of uncomfortable moments and things that don’t go as planned.
For instance I had to order pizza on the phone and my network was unusually weak. When ordering, the guy wasn’t hearing me properly and off course my network chose the precise moment after I gave away my phone number so they could retrieve my information (such as my address) to go off, thus causing the phone to hang up, and leaving me with no other choice but to call back. Absolute disaster! Sweaty palms made the phone slip from my hands, and my stutter made it so difficult for the poor man to understand what I was saying that he was most certainly beginning to think this was some amateur prank pulled by a 10 year-old. My normally rich vocabulary was reduced to, “So…um…yeah.”
Now, on a normal basis, meaning when I don’t interact with other members of my species, I am the kind of girl who can pull of some sweet dance moves in the supermarket just because an awesome song is blaring out of the speakers, not minding for a single moment who might witness the scene. I do the same thing at clubs. But for some reasons when comes the time to do my human being duties like talking to another human being, if something unexpected comes up I will get into a defense state, shut down and get awkward.
Does it happen to you? How do you deal with it?
10 replies on “Mirror, Mirror On the Wall, Who’s the Most Awkward of Them All?”
I am awkward most of the time, but lots of forced interactions have made me not care so much. The one exception is being stuck in a small space with someone and feeling obligated to make small talk. For example, being in the car with my boss and getting s haircut. I either babble or completely shut down and it is always uncomfortable.
I am generally fairly smooth, but it’s a practiced ability after YEARS of hardly being able to talk to people. However, I have a blind spot in that I cannot. Talk. To my landlady. I make the BF deal with every single conversation with her, and she was in here just a couple of hours ago and complimenting how cute the place looks and I got all flustered and unable to pronounce any words. It’s just, we give her so much money! To live in her basement apartment! And that makes me awkward and weird and we have a sexy print hanging in the hallway and she CANNOT BE ALLOWED TO SEE THAT BECAUSE I WILL DIE OF EMBARRASSMENT.
I love that print, though, and it’s staying up.
I have to rehearse phone calls before I can psych myself up enough to make them. I have to call in prescriptions after I know the pharmacy is closed because sometimes a human will answer the phone and it freaks me out (even though it’s actually much quicker to just tell them what I want rather than keying in the Rx numbers and such). I absolutely refuse to call for Chinese takeout; I always manage to screw it up and sound like an idiot. (Thankfully my husband doesn’t mind doing that.)
I abhor giving a call. I usually email or text. My friends need to have my consent before calling or else they know I won’t take it.
I can’t handle short contacts like that. I don’t know when to say goodbye to the hair dresser/pizza guy/whoever on the phone, and yes, calling them is no fun either. I use a lot of pauses, just to start talking again at the same time as the other does. Which is SO annoying.
Ugh me either. My number one awkward moment of the day is always this- I am incapable of ordering a chai tea latte from Starbucks. I get so flustered that I always say “tai chi”. It’s not even funny anymore, seriously.
Honestly I order in Starbucks only if the queue is miserably long,so it gives me enough time to rehearse what I’m about to say and I never ever add something to my order at last minute.
See I have no problem ordering my drink the way I like it, but I get really embarased if the barista calls it out to the whole damn store when my order comes up.* Because I feel stupid about letting the world know how ridiculously complex I like my coffee apparently.
*”I’VE GOT THE TRIPPLE MOCHA WITH SOY AAAAAND WHIP CREAM!” Yes, thank you. Now everyone is going to wonder why my aversion to dairy only extends to milk. Thanks. I like the way soy milk tastes in espresso better. What’s it to ya?
Aww, I’m sorry. But that is really adorable…
As a Starbucks veteran, I can assure you that TONS of people do this and it’s kind of cute! But you can always shorten it to chai latte if it helps.