If You're Awkward and You Know It, Don't Clap Your Hands! It's Embarrassing!

I didn't get a chance to finish my post from yesterday about awkward people and their little sweaty ways. I began my argument by acknowledging my own geekiness and was about to go on to then dis the super awkward, but didn't get a chance to finish.

I might have mentioned earlier that I recently saw the last part of Napolean Dynamite and still like it a lot. Now that guy is completely dorky and looks like he has milk breath and post nasal drip. In the prom scene, he has his arms just barely touching his partner's waist and it's painfully uncomfortable. And yet, he has an attractive confidence or maybe it's obliviousness that makes him ultimately cool in some ways rather than a loser. The reason I mention him is to clarify that I'm not talking about that kind of sweet nerdiness, but a different strain of unrestrained, almost aggressive dorkiness that borders on the icky. It needs a new name, something like "Oogliness."

I'm harping on this b/c of someone I know who exudes oogly, and I have to deal with he/she/it on a semi-regular basis. I leave every encounter feeling like I just barely escaped seeing someone completely fall apart in some horribly awkward social way, like tripping down the stairs and cracking off a front tooth and picking it up off the ground and putting it in a pant's pocket like it's no big deal and then attempting to continue the conversation with blood running down his/her chin.

Or being forced to have a conversation wherein there is something gravely amiss about the other person that the person doesn't know about like something to do with bodily functions, but you can't say anything because it's just too awful but you know the person will discover it later and be mortified like this one time I was having a conversation with a guy who had a very obvious pubic hair on the collar of his shirt (this was years ago. You will want to die when I tell you that he was a waiter and the hair probably ended up in some old lady's Cobb salad).

Or else you'll be alone together in the elevator and the person will trumpet a very audible bodily expulsion, one that goes on for several seconds and ends on a high note and you'll just have to stand there and stare at the ceiling and pray that it doesn't also smell. And the person will never, ever make it any easier. Maybe that's my fear; seeing someone in a situation that I know he/she will relive in Technicolor detail for some time to come.

I've had a few encounters like this. Every girl gets her period in front of someone, especially when you're young and have no idea what to expect and decide to wear your new white pants made by Esprit because there's a pep rally after school and Steve Crossett will be there and what the heck! It's already the second day of your period and you have on a tiny mini pad; it'll be fine. That exact thing didn't happen to me, but something similar did on a date with a guy from a different high school. Many years later in college, someone was telling me a story she heard where the guy took this girl out and she had on a pretty silk dress and bled on it and he was very gallant and pretended he thought it was something else and I was like, Hey, who told you that story? Peter Sloan? Because that girl was ME. I didn't care though b/c Peter Sloan was boring and told long, long, long stories that all had the same message about how awesome he was and though he was cute, he wasn't very interesting and I actually think he may now be an exotic male dancer in the Keys, if you know what I mean.

And of course middle and high school can be horrible and bad for a lot of people because you have no idea who you are or what you're doing or why you're doing it and it's very confusing. But what happens if you never get out of that stage and you are still that person, on the outside and in? I think most of us hold onto some of that angst and strangeness, but we learn to "act normal" too or to hide a lot of it, and then there are others who haven't.

Okay, enough about this.