car

2. Making eye contact with a stranger

July 29, 2018 by Edwin C. 6 Comments

It has been a long day at a grocery store, you are tired and you just want to get home. You reach for your keys, which take a long while to finally reach (and you begin wondering why it is so hard to put your hands in your pocket. Weight gain? NO!). You put everything away and reach for your car door, which happens to lightly tap the car next to yours.

Oops.

No big deal, right? Wrong! You casually looked inside just in case someone was inside, and yes. What is worse is that you’ve made eye contact with him. What to do now? Well sorry, I can’t help you there; I’m actually supposed to be writing about the awkwardness of making eye contact with a stranger.

You see, what makes this an awkward situation is the the eye contact. You could’ve just hit the car, and gone right inside and left. But no. You stayed and looked inside. Think about those other times when you accidentally make eye contact with someone you don’t know. Like in a restaurant.

You’re at your table, and across the room, you happen to make eye contact with someone else across the dining area. Alright, it happens. Now let’s say it happens again. You can almost feel it now. The awkward is creeping in.

It happens all the time. Do you ever fear walking toward someone while you’re on a sidewalk because of how uncomfortable it feels? It isn’t because of your clothes don’t match, or because you smell funny; it is because you won’t know what to do once you’re face to face with this other pedestrian. Do you look at her in the eye? Do you say “hi” without feeling like a creep? What to do, what to do. You can always refer to #1 and just hope you don’t get caught pretending to be on your cell phone..

Yeah! Just pretend to be on your cell phone.

41. Getting honked at

June 8, 2011 by Edwin C. 10 Comments

Cars have no tone. I mean yeah you have the mean looking cars, and then the nice mousy ones and their horns that sound like it took a lot of effort to let out and require a deep breath soon afterwards, but these do not go along with the message that the driver is trying to deliver.

Honk! is supposed to express whether a driver is angry because you cut her off, Honk! also has to tell someone that they are getting into your lane, and honk! is all your car is allowed to say when you want to kindly remind the driver in front of you that the light has turned green. What comes out depends on your car. I used to drive around a large vehicle, so every sound that came out of that thing sounded like a threat, a bit like “GET OUT OF THE WAY!” even when I was trying to be nice to an old lady who didn’t know that the turn light was green.

I was waiting for the light behind a car at an intersection today. It turned green, and the car wouldn’t move. I wanted to honk to let him know that he should go, but then I remembered how awkward it is when I get honked at so I decided not to do it. I was about to honk, since he was taking too long but then the person behind me honked instead. It worked. It sounded much nicer than my honk! would’ve sounded. Woo hoo! One time, a car honked at me at a light and I went to turn into a pharmacy. The car was right behind me, and turned into the same parking lot. That was pretty awkward, so I figured I’d have a little fun with it; I decided to wait for him to park and then take the spot right next to his (it was pretty late at night and the lot was pretty much empty). Then I added a little eye contact.

Now THAT’S my type of awkward!

#11 When someone fails at parking

April 20, 2011 by Edwin C. 3 Comments

Of course, it is awkward if you’re watching it happen, or if someone is watching you attempt to park. Now of course, parking is extremely difficult for some of us; we might even park far away from everyone so that they don’t see us attempt to fit in a tiny spot that will likely take us 20 tries. Its a form of pressure that we feel to park correctly. Sometimes we begin to feel nervous and might even start sweating or just wanting to remove ourselves from that situation. Yeah, yeah.. I would just laugh and leave the car just like it is on the image above.

Then again, watching anyone fail at anything is awkward if you’re there watching the action:

1) Failing to properly remove change from your pocket and dropping it on the floor. “It got stuck onto something, I guess!”

2) Spontaneously dropping something. “So I was holding the cup and then it just, I don’t know …fell.”

3) When you’re trying to drink water from a bottle and you miss your mouth. “What? I only spilled a little bit.”

Simple tasks. Awkward moments.

How do you react when these happen to you?

#10 Running for the bus

April 19, 2011 by Edwin C. 2 Comments

Have you ever dropped a napkin while you’re eating at an outdoor table, like at a park, or at the patio section of a restaurant? One of the things about being outdoors, besides it being awesome, is that there is always light breezes that are pretty much unpredictable. Here is the scenario:

You drop the napkin. Depending on your personality, you will either attempt to pick it up immediately, or look at it and reach to get it with your shoe a couple of seconds after (sometimes even without looking). Supposing you are reaching for it, a light wind comes by and takes it a little further from you. At this point, you might stand up and reach for it again, but hesitate because another breeze can come by and take it farther, just as you reach for it. Of course, you can give the poor napkin an evil glare and then reach for it, it might keep it in place.

Running for the bus has the same effect. You see it there, “waiting for you”. But as you approach it the doors close. Will it still wait for you once it sees you?

I’ve seen plenty of people run for the bus, and just as they are one bus-length away from it, it leaves. Then they just end up feeling all awkward. We all saw you miss the bus. Some of us feel sorry for you while others might be laughing. We just don’t know what people will do in this world. Apparently we don’t know what buses or napkins will do either.

If you see the bus waiting there, decide if you want to go for it or not, and then do it! Soon after you miss the bus, just don’t make eye contact with anybody, and if someone choses to yell out the window “sucks for you, man!” which I’ve heard a million times, don’t flip them off, just laugh and be cool about it. Pretend like it happens to you all the time.