Awkward Things I Say To Girls

Certain kinds of salmon manage to travel 900 miles upstream from the Pacific ocean into central Idaho to have babies. And, seriously, judging by this gross picture of a dissected salmon, salmon brains are freaking tiny. I mean, look at that thing. If a salmon can get back upstream to have sex with salmon-chicks on that much brain, how come my highly evolved mammal-brain can’t figure out phone numbers?

Here’s an(other) example.

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I’m typing this post from my old bedroom on Christmas Eve. There is an awkward thing that I will get to later on, but first there are two things I want to mention about how my blog is going these days. Sometimes I wonder if I can keep this up for much longer. I mean, I have to run out of things to talk about, right? Then I remember these two facts:

1. I have a list of old awkward things I want to get to someday, but it keeps getting longer as I think of a thing to write about more than once a week.

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I’ve been tagged. And, frankly, it’s about time I let you behind the curtain a little bit.

Also, don’t be surprised if you notice that a Christmas Miracle has happened to this website the next time you stop by. We’re turning it up to 11 over here at Awkward Things, just in time for the new year. Okay. On to the five things!

Thing One:

I’ve had the songs “I Don’t Want To Set The World On Fire” (made famous by Horace Heidt and His Musical Knights in 1941) and “Chances Are” (the first #1 hit for Johnny Mathis) intermittently stuck in my head since around 1997, when the Clover Hill High School show choir performed them together as a medley ballad in their competition show. I was in the band that accompanied them at competitions, but, since they did this part of the show a capella, I didn’t have to play and could just listen.

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“Do you mind genuinely kissing each other on stage? Because we could do fake stage kisses if you want, but it just wouldn’t be the same.”

It’s the early summer of 1998. My junior year of high school was just about over. I had just found out that I had won the male lead in the fall musical. The drama teacher had gathered me together with Female Lead to have a discussion about what that means.

Apparently, that means kissing.

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About a week and a half ago, I was at a bar with a friend. He’s married, and, lucky for you, I’m not.

A girl sits down with us who my friend knows and who I don’t. She is definitely pretty, but she seems really distracted. I wonder to myself: what is she distracted about? She looks over at my friend and asks the worst question ever.

“Do you think I’m good looking?”

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Several years ago, I said an awkward thing that worked out great.

I was at a party in college just, like, dominating the meningitis-pong table, when I noticed a girl with dark hair and a unique fashion sense somewhere across the apartment.

I don’t believe in types, but I do believe in statistics, and I will say this: based on the available empirical evidence, if you’re a girl with “dark hair” and “a unique fashion sense,” you can reject the null hypothesis with a pretty high confidence level, because I have a crush on you.

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Up until now, all of the stories I’ve told in this blog have been depressing tales of misery and woe, where awkward failure has inevitably brought a quick and hilarious end to any asking- or making-out that I had been trying to accomplish.

Recently, though, a conversation I was having with a girl in a bar rose from the ashes of awkwardness like an adolescent phoenix to end up being kind of cool.

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“I don’t want to make out with you, Justin.”

Yeah, I think I can accommodate that request. “Uh, okay,” is probably all I managed to say, but I was a little confused. Because seriously, it’s as though she had just told me that she intended never to levitate. She was cute, smart, fun, interesting, and everything you could want in a person to make out with. Even so, I pretty much decided I would not kiss this girl ever since the uncomfortable, awkward maybe-date we had gone on to see My Big Fat Greek Wedding a year before, when I showed up with shaving cream still behind one ear. Plus, I still don’t think she thought it was a date. It definitely wasn’t a date.

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For the first time (that I know of), I’ve decided to write about an awkward thing I said to a girl who reads this blog. I was pretty nervous about how she’d take it, and plus this is probably the most embarrassing thing I’ve ever posted, so I called her to talk to her first.

I bet you’d like to listen in, wouldn’t you? Fine, twist my arm. Here’s what I remember of the interesting part.

“Listen, a few weeks ago when I visited you and stayed at your dorm . . .”

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