40. Saying "you too" at an inappropriate time

“Alright, well let me know if I can get you anything else. Enjoy your meal.”

“You too”, a woman responds to the waiter.

Awkward.

Has it ever happened to you before? You accidentally let it out, its almost as though it is a script that you’re following out there in the real world. They say the whole world is a stage. . . O.K. enough philosophical stuff here, lets get into the real subject: we’re always following some type of script. When people ask us “How are you?” we say “fine, and you?” even if we got left at the altar, even if grandma got run over by a reindeer, or if we recently got sucked into Glee! We’re NOT fine! Yet we still say we are because it is what people do. And well, when people make a statement like “Have a nice day!” or “It was nice seeing you.” we respond with “You too”. Its instinct or something.

Just kidding, our reaction is actually buried deep in there in our subconscious mind. We don’t notice these things but we still do it. That feeling when you begin to wonder if you already passed your exit on the freeway is because you weren’t paying attention on the road (scary, right?) but something took over, and this we owe to our subconscious. I guess we trust it whether we know it or not.

But going back to the waiter scenario: you didn’t mean to say “You too” and now your whole table heard. Nice.

My best tip here is to just ignore it and pretend that it never happened. It usually gets disregarded fairly quickly because it happens so often that people decide to not make it a big deal anymore. Then why am I even listing this as an awkward moment? Because it’s still awkward!

Funny, I just remembered a story having something to do with this, except its a little backward. I was walking with one of my friends outside of the student center at my university when she bumped into one of her friends. I guess they hadn’t seen each other in a while, since they seemed pretty excited about the encounter.

“Hey! How have you been?”

“Good! How are you?”

“Good, thanks”

“Good!”

“Alright well, it was really nice seeing you!” the other girl said as she was walking away.

“Good..”

Hahaha! Just thinking of that moment reminds me of the I-just-ate-sour-candy expression on my friend’s face when she realized what she just said. It even sounded all confident and serious, I wonder what the other girl thought about it.

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