Awkward List

Awkward moments and more weird stuff

children

6. When children are brutally honest with you in front of others

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If you’ve ever heard a child tell you,

“Are you having a baby too?” (while pointing at your stomach)

“Why is your face so hairy?”

“Do you have a lot of money?”, or even better:

“You look like a fly with those glasses.”

 

Yes, those glasses that cost you a paycheck and a half make you look like a fly. Hey, I didn’t say it!

From user jpctalbot, flickr.com

You know what I’m talking about. They indirectly tell you a truth by asking you a question. They ask you if you’re having a baby and making you realize that your belly is big. By asking why your face is hairy, they remind you that you haven’t shaved in a while, and by asking you if you have a lot of money, you realize that you’re not rich.

I was in my old room of my parent’s home, sitting on the futon reading a book. When my three-year old cousin comes into the room and says “Your room is messy”, when I had spent the whole previous evening tidying up. But hey, she told me what she saw. What I’ve noticed before though, is that these children are taught to keep their opinions to themselves at a very early age. I will tell you about a situation in which I was in when I volunteered at an elementary school not far from my high school.

I was partnered up with a high school girl that had experience in the elementary school deal, she knew the teachers and many many students. She had been volunteering for about two years. I can go on and on about her, and probably so could the child we were playing with. Except he’s a lot more bold. We were playing with the play-doh, and another child next to us was drawing Liz, the high school girl. As soon as the child finished, our play-doh kindergarten partner said:

“Annie, you forgot something. She has a lot of pimples!”

Dude.

Liz turned bright red. I didn’t know how to react, so I did what my instincts told me to do and I told on him. No, just kidding. I changed the topic immediately and pretended I had not heard anything.

Ever been in a situation like that?

Part of a complete breakfast

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ceerealI’m not sure if cereal commercials still say the whole “part of a complete breakfast” thing at the end, since I no longer watch cartoons and the advertisements aimed at my age group are more in the soda and cars categories. Here’s what I’m talking about: cereal commercials used to do their catchy jingle thing, blah blah our cereal is the best, try it.. blah, blah, and then….

They would show cereal, a glass of milk, a glass of orange juice, a muffin, an apple. I remember a Honey Nut Cheerios one that would have cereal, glass of milk, glass of orange juice, a croissant, grapes, and an apple.

I never ate cereal plus all those other things. Heck, sometimes I’d skip the milk.

I walked through the cereal aisle the other day at the grocery store, and I remembered exactly how I felt about it back in the day. I loved colorful or chocolaty cereals. Sugar with a hint of food coloring? Count me in! But as I was staring at a boring blue box of Total, I heard the high pitched voice of a little kid say “Excuse me?” and he walked right in front of me and grabbed a box of Lucky Charms (it had a free toy or something in there, too) and he walked back to his mom’s shopping cart.

Excuse me.. excuse me..

Why can’t I do that when I need something but a person is standing right in front of it?

It happens at bookstores, at yard sales, and definitely at the grocery store. If I need a can of chili and someone is standing there trying to decide if she wants her chili with beans or no beans, I just kinda hover around. I look up and down as if I can’t find the thing I’m looking for. 25% of the time the person figures it out and they move away (at which point you widen your eyes and pretend like you just found your item). The other times, I just kinda wait around.. and get closer to the person. I’m seriously starting to believe that strangers repel each other. You move closer, and they step away. Now THAT works most of the time.

If all else fails, you can always send your kid.

Related articles

"Try me!"

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131. When you press the “Try me!” button on a toy and you can’t get it to shut up.

I like toy stores, I find them fun.

Back in the day, glow-in-the-dark things, and “stuff that flies” were my favorite! I once found one of those toys with a pull rope thing and some type of disk over it that would fly toward the sky when you pulled on the string. And IT GLOWED IN THE DARK. I still play around with glow sticks and my glowy stars are still stuck to my ceiling. I even decorated my room with invisible glow-in-the-dark paint and it still glows 10 years later. Oh, the awesomeness..

I was at Toys-R-Us recently, and I went straight for the cheap discount toys, since those are the ones I find most familiar. After browsing around, I decided to go toward the modern stuff.

Peew! Peew! Peew! Beep beep beep beep

… that’s all I heard!

Those weird toys that activate when you step in front of them were freaking me out, man. Even the stuffed animals have some type of electronics in them. And they all say “Try me!” … and they have a button on their paws … or a string of some sort … and the “Try me!” sticker is red … and I couldn’t help it. Who can resist those things? I squeezed the bear’s paw.

So the bear started singing and all was happy with the world! A rainbow materialized from under me and it turned into a slide! And I was sliding down past mushrooms made of marshmallows and scooped up roses on my way down. Oh, wow you guys should’ve been there!

It lasted for about 1 second.

Then it got loud and I couldn’t get it to shut up. I squeezed the paw again and it started over with a different song. Then some other toy started singing. So obviously I walked away –crying. No, just kidding … not crying. Imagine? Hahaha!

I did walk away though, avoiding as much eye contact as possible while the thing kept singing.


I’m more than just awkward, amigos! For those of you on tumblr, come find me! I’m still just getting started with it.. but it’s getting a bit lonely already. Here’s the link: edwincov.tumblr.com

Why are blankets shaped like rectangles?

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That awkward kick thing you have to do to get your blanket back the “right way”.

While I was growing up and learning about the world around me, the strangest thing to understand had to do with my shoes. No, it wasn’t how to tie them, or even understanding why certain people owned hundreds of pairs; it was that there was one shoe specifically designed for one foot. Why didn’t the left shoe fit well on the right foot? What if I wanted the design to be facing the other way? Nope, it wasn’t going to happen. Eventually, I gave it up and started thinking about other things.. and later I realized that some things take time to get used to. Even if they don’t make sense.

For one, beds are usually shaped like rectangles. Longer from one side and shorter on the other. Why must sheets and blankets be shaped this way too? I guess it looks better… But I really think that blanket designers have to think that the blanket should be made to benefit the person, not so much benefit the look of the bed. I’ll tell you what I mean:
Suppose it is a cold winter night and you are woken up by your legs being cold. What do you do? You try to adjust the blanket over you in order to cover your whole body.. but it doesn’t work! What the heck is going on? The blanket is turned on its side. Now you must do a weird kick-thing and get the blanket to turn to the “correct” way. You didn’t only become more awake because of this, but also you must deal with the cold areas of the blanket. The point is that it would be less of a problem if the blankets were shaped like squares, or even circles (this is the part where you go “Yeah! Circles!”). Yeah, the bed would look a little different with a circular blanket, but I think it would be worth it.
Other things took some time to get used to:
  • Why was the Game Boy called that? It wasn’t a boy. Walk Man? Same thing, only awkwarder. Then again, Playboy.. hmm.. anyway, its just wrong.
  • I always felt younger than I actually was. I thought of this: When I was a 3rd grader, the 5th graders seemed a lot bigger and older; but as soon as I got to be that age, I felt like I wasn’t old enough to be a 5th grader. In high school, I saw college students as adults; now that I’m in college, I don’t feel so old.
  • Women. Well just interaction between genders in general. You probably know what I mean.
All I can say now is: Oh well. I wouldn’t know what to answer if a child asked me why blankets are shaped that way, or even why the name “watermelon” fits the fruit so perfectly.
Can anybody think of any answers, or bring up other things that take time to get used to?

66. Bumping heads

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Literally bumping heads.

You see, things that we consider to be peculiar, or awkward are typically things that don’t happen very often. If they happened all of the time, we would become used to them and therefore not find them interesting anymore. I’m not sure if many people can relate to this one, but I’ll give it a shot anyway.

Sometimes it happens when you’re about to take a picture. You both lean toward each other and Bump! there it is. [Read more…] about 66. Bumping heads

46. Not knowing if someone's baby is a boy or a girl

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Ever bumped into someone on the street that has a baby in a stroller, or in her arms?

You take a look at the baby and realize: Wow! What a cute baby! And of course, just out of curiosity, you might want to ask questions to find out the baby’s age. Not a difficult task, right? Wrong!

What if the baby is too young to be able to make the gender obvious to the observer? And you know, sometimes mothers can be extra sensitive about these things. . .

A person might end up asking “How old is it?“, or “Is it a boy or a girl?” First of all, why do people even refer to a baby as “it”? Even balloons say things like “It’s a Boy!”. It? Well anyway, figuring out the gender of the baby is very important here, and no sometimes you cannot tell by the color of the baby’s clothes. We live in a changing society, people. Pink is no longer a girl color, and blue is actually a favorite color of many girls. Besides, a lot of moms decide to make it extra difficult for the rest of us and dress their babies in orange or greens and yellows.

If you really don’t know, just ask “Is your baby a boy or a girl?” and don’t take a random guess by saying “He is so cute!” and then hear the angry parent say “She is a girl!” This is an awkward moment I would rather avoid.

Sources: Image, Idea [Thank you] 

23. When someone has a booger

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While in a comment conversation with Bee, an important question was brought up: will you say something about it, or pretend it is not there? When somebody has a little green thing sticking out of their nose, it is hard to look away. It’s almost like when someone has a pimple, you can’t avoid it. It’s there, creepily looking at you.

It’s embarrassing for the person who is looking at it. The booger person has no idea why you keep doing a weird shift of looking at her nose, then her eyes, then her nose, then her eyes.. while she’s trying to make eye contact with you. If you have ever been in one of these situations, you probably know how things usually go:

1) You try to look away every opportunity you get.

2) After attempting to not look at it, you find yourself doing so.

3) It becomes extremely difficult to focus on the conversation.

If you pretend it isn’t there, it will keep distracting you. If you decide to say something, you have to deal with the awkwardness that comes after.

What is the best thing to do in this situation?

Sources: Image, Idea

18. Pimples

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After rolling out of bed in the morning, you head to the bathroom to brush your teeth. You look in the mirror and there it is . . a pimple.

These seem to always come when you least need them; right before you get your picture taken, when you’re meeting a potential client for lunch or heading to an interview.

“Alright,” you might say, “these things are perfectly natural and they happen to people all the time.”

And yes, they do. But what happens when you see somebody with a huge pimple on their nose? You look at it. Admit it, you can’t help it. It is just the way our minds work; we see something that stands out in a person’s face and we’re automatically drawn to it.

The issue here, however, is how awkward this situation really is when the pimple is observed by someone else. You noticed the other person’s pimple, and they noticed that you looked at it. Darn it! You made it too obvious. When a person is speaking to you, and especially if he or she is being extra self-conscious for the day, they tend to follow your eyes in conversations in order to make eye contact. If you get distracted by that big red dot on their face, they will notice. And now you know that they noticed that you noticed. Don’t worry, even if you didn’t look at it, they would assume that you’re actually avoiding it just to be nice. Children won’t avoid it though, they’ll tell you the truth; so if they’re present prepare for some fun.You just can’t win here.

Good news! This situation doesn’t go very far. You will probably not discuss the pimple anyway, but be prepared if you have to. I’ve encountered a scenario where a girl asked me: “Does it look that bad?”

“No, I can barely see it.”

I could “barely see it” but from far. The thing was huge. She knew it. I knew it. Awkward.

#9 Farts

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Even the word sounds awkward.

Fart.

I was studying at the university library one day, and I was in a hurry because I was behind on my work, and I needed to go to the post office before it closed. I was at a table by a huge window, and couches next to me. On one of the couches, I could see a backpack leaning on it with a young man with his legs and arms crossed. He must’ve been napping. After some frustration, I took off my earphones and just stared at my paper for about a minute (it happens all the time) when my frustration got interrupted.

I heard a loud fart coming from the couch next to me. The guy tried to jump up and fell off the couch with a loud thump. Not only that, but he also spilled his water in the bottle and looked in my direction by using the couch as a shield and slowly creeping upwards to see the rest of us looking at him. He turned bright red. His own fart woke him up and scared him. How embarrassing.

The girl I was sharing the table with looked at me, and that’s what did it. I couldn’t help it. I tried really hard not to laugh, my attempts sounded like a mix between a cough and a sneeze combined with baby noises. Yeah, imagine that.

Of course, there are many different situations in which this could be more uncomfortable.

from moonbattery.com

Imagine you’re in a car with only one passenger and then suddenly an unpleasant smell begins to surround the air inside the vehicle. Obviously, one of the two people in the car must have farted, but what is more interesting is that the person that didn’t fart knows he or she didn’t. And the person that farted knows he or she farted. You both know.

Awkward?

Or what if you decide to roll down the window a little in your car and suddenly a smell begins to penetrate your car. The other person might think that you had planned to air out the car after you farted. There’s no way of proving that you didn’t fart.

Of course, it is pretty hilarious to think about farts. Especially when they put you in uncomfortable situations, like when:

1) The old man waiting in front of you in line lets one rip.

2) When babies fart, and they find it funny.

3) When dogs fart.

People have been farting since the beginning of time, why haven’t we gotten used to it? I guess the thought of gas going from the colon to someone else’s lungs is a bit unpleasant to think about.