Awkward List

Awkward moments and more weird stuff

parenting

Part of a complete breakfast

by 3 Comments

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!"

by 10 Comments

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

Do you know how to alphabetize?

by 18 Comments

128. When you realize that you sing The Alphabet Song in order to know what letter comes next.

Happy Monday! It is time to begin the work week and look forward to Friday once again. Why is Monday so far from Friday, and Friday so close to Monday? Freakin’ Romans.

One of the first jobs I had was to file papers as volunteer work for a teacher. I was in 4th grade. I still remember that they asked us to go over and help out, but only if we met one requirement. We had to be able to alphabetize. Of course I knew how to do it, it was back in the day when we actually had to know how to find a word in a dictionary. You guys remember those days, we would look up the word “sex” and giggle among ourselves, sigh.. those were the days. Anyway, the teacher gave us a bunch of sheets of paper. The instructions were simple:

1. Use only the blue folders

2. Ignore the word “the” if its the first word in the title.

The whole time, me and Stephanie (the chosen ones) were struggling until she wrote the alphabet on a red sheet of construction paper and we were able to use it as a reference. That’s right, we got smart.

Fast forward 15 years later, and I bump into the same problem while looking for a book on a shelf. It was organized by author, which pretty much in alphabetical order from the author’s last name. My shelves are organized by color at home, since I remember books by their covers (hey, at least I don’t judge).

You should hear me asking for help finding a book, it’s horrible.. I describe the cover and what I “think” the book title sounds like.

I needed to find two books. One by Mitch Albom (that was easy), and one by Eckhart Tolle. Yes, I happened to know names of these books, otherwise I would’ve described them as:

“One of them is small, beige with a red border, red letters and tiny image of a Ferris wheel, and the other has a huge 3-letter word in the front, and its cloudy green and yellow-ish.”

But by looking for the last name “Tolle” I came to a realization:

I always sing the Alphabet Song in my head to figure out what letter comes next.

It sucks for the later letters, because then you have to sing the whole thing:

A-B-C-D-E-F-G..H-I-J-K-ELEMENO-P..Q-R-S…T-U-V..W-X..Y-AND-Z.

Yes, with the pauses and everything.

Whatever. I still know how to alphabetize.. thank you, kindergarten.

——–

Thank you, all! When I logged into WordPress this weekend, I noticed this awesome thing on my notifications, 1000 likes!

Who was it? Yes, I tracked it.. It was… drumroll please…….  Meghna, from The White Marigold!

69. Getting "The Sex Talk" from your parents

by 23 Comments

Oh yeah. You know, when your parents first talk to you about intercourse?

I could just end this post now but I won’t, even though there isn’t much else to say about this situation. We will make this educational. [Read more…] about 69. Getting "The Sex Talk" from your parents

61. When your parents talk about sex

by 8 Comments

“Dear Edwin,

I have to tell you about a situation that happened with a friend of mine. While a friend and her family were in the living room together, her mom looked through a book about sex for couples. This would’ve been fine, except her mom decided to comment on the book.

‘This book has a lot of good points, but they forgot one thing: the usage of toys for women who can’t have orgasms during sex. I’m one of them.’

According to my friend, her dad was just there not saying anything. Awkward.

Sincerely,

Trees.”

– – – – – – –

I know what some of you might be thinking.

Edwin, I don’t believe this is awkward. My parents and I talk about this topic all of the time and we’re all very mature about it and and and…

Alright, then use this post to find out what the other 97% of the population thinks.

Well, Trees. .

Yes definitely awkward. What is a person supposed to say when a parent begins to talk about such a topic? Nobody wants to think about their parents doing it no matter how old you are. When sex gets brought up in a conversation and your parents talk about it, it can be a pretty uncomfortable situation. I’m curious to know how the rest of the conversation went, or if her dad ever said anything about it though.

Talk about awkward. . what do you guys think?