Awkward Things I Say To Girls


IT ALWAYS SEEMED LIKE THE RIGHT THING TO SAY AT THE TIME

I hope we can still be friends.

Uh, hey.

Look, I know it’s been a while, and I know I didn’t call or write, and I’m sorry. Though it’s little consolation, I want you to know that I thought about you constantly. I only saw other people like half a dozen times, and frankly I didn’t enjoy it and missed you.

There were lots of reasons not to write the blog, virtually none of which I can describe in detail without continuing the extended metaphor much further than is approved by the FDA for human daily allowance of metaphor. However, I do realize that I won’t get out of this week’s blog post alive without hitting three more things:

  1. Yes, I am 100% single.
  2. INAD resumes in a week. Buckle up.
  3. I swear I wrote an awkward thing for today, but I can’t for the life of me figure out where the hell I saved it. But I promised myself that I’d post about girls today, and post I shall. Here’s a brief little vignette that I jotted down on a business trip a while ago.

I leaned forward. She looked up at me.

“Let’s build a campfire right here between these benches,” I said to her. She shivered and giggled. “We’ll get some marshmallows and sticks and camp out. Are you in?”

She nodded and giggled again. “Once, when the power was out, I roasted a marshmallow with a candle! It took like an hour.”

She was another single serving friend from the airport, a cute and bubbly freckled blonde sophomore engineer at Lehigh who was trying to get to Allentown, departing gate F17. She wore purple but liked pink. I was on my way back from recruiting in Cleveland, departing to Richmond from gate F16. We were both trapped in Philadelphia for an hour and a half with nothing to do but pretend to ignore each other when we weren’t subtly flirting, not for keeps but just for the hell of it. It sure beats not quite making eye contact with anyone while hoping to get out of the stupid airport.

I’m not even going to pretend that this post was about how I talked to a random person, humanity was connected together, how happy we’d be if we understood strangers, and so forth. I mean, it originally was about that. How we should reach out as a country to our brother man and lift him up.

Seriously. Lets be honest with ourselves. If you have a floral skirt on and smile a lot, you’re a lot more interesting to me than my brother man.

21 Responses to “I hope we can still be friends.”

  1. Tim F. Says:

    Good to see you back, Awkward dude. I was beginning to wonder what had happened to my separated-at-birth twin in spirit.

  2. MB Says:

    Finally, geez. You have a civic responsibility to write in this thing, and you have failed my friend. Failed.

  3. Bruce Says:

    Glad to see that you’re posting again. It’s been too long. I was getting worried. But now, I can’t wait for next week! (But by “resumes”, do you mean a single post? Or will it will be a regular thing again?)

    By the way, nice Fight Club reference.

  4. Justin Says:

    Yep, oops, I completely forgot to mention it. I’m going to do weekly updates on the blog for a while. Posts will go up on Tuesdays. I’ll try to alternate INAD with other stuff depending on how I’m feeling. But next week will definitely be an INAD to get us going again. Would it be better to do a MWF posting sched like last spring? Yes. Would that burn me out? Yes. So weekly it is for now, and we’ll see how it’s going.

  5. James Gimbi Says:

    You have NO IDEA how stoked I was when your address pop up on my RSS feeder. You made my day, and it’s finals week here in Rochester so that’s fairly significant. Good to have you back, mate!

  6. Seamus Says:

    HURRAY!!! You’re finally back! Oh how I have missed your awkward tales. I will be counting down the hours til next weeks post. LOL

  7. Daniel Says:

    The return of the king! You make my life much brighter. I can’t wait to keep reading. =D

  8. Hobbes Says:

    >Seriously. Lets be honest with ourselves. If you have a floral skirt on and
    >smile a lot, you’re a lot more interesting to me than my brother man.

    Amen.

  9. Incognito Says:

    Man, Ive given up on this blog long ago. Infact I’ve been giving up on it about 3 times a week for the entire duration of your unschedueled absence.

    Welcome back. Weekly updates will do just fine. I’ll probably still check the website 3 time a week though, just in case :)

  10. girlinyellowdress Says:

    YAY! I have literally checked this blog every day since the last post. Glad to have you back!

  11. Amanda Says:

    I’ve checked it daily, too. :)

    And I caught the Fight Club reference, but thought it was just slightly not subtle enough. Haha.

  12. laika Says:

    Don’t worry. Your sister woman probably likes you a lot better anyway. :)

  13. CarnageSIS Says:

    So great to see you back! I discovered your blog about a month ago and like girlinyellowdress checked it everyday for updates. Really love your writing and can’t wait for more!

  14. Caitlin Says:

    Hey! Cool to see you’re back! I just found this blog the other day and started reading the archives. I love your writing and I’m glad you’re updating again.

  15. Frigga Says:

    Welcome back!!!

  16. Lolita Says:

    Glad you’re back, Justin :)

  17. Johanna Says:

    This made me smile a lot!

  18. Jo-Hannah Says:

    I agree with Johanna (yea we are 2 different people).u always seem to say the wrong things-LOL hush i feel your pain ,anyways wish you luck in your seacrh for love.

  19. Jo-Hannah Says:

    *search- wrong spelling(my apologies)

  20. Nick Says:

    Short and sweet. I’m glad to see you’re back as well. I almost thought this website would be gone for good. Thanks for writing, and please don’t leave us in the dark again. =D

  21. the JR Says:

    whoa… finally more reading to make me feel a wee bit better about myself…

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