Righto...

I seem to attract awkward situations. To be fair, it probably doesn't help that whenever an awkward situation does arise instead of powering through and manfully ignoring it like any normal repressed British citizen, I usually finding myself drawing attention to the situation by announcing something heinous like "AWKWARD.COM". How moronic. I literally can't help myself though, to revel in awkward situations is part of my nature. It's one of my many theories that everyone has it, just some people choose to tap into it and others - wisely - ignore it.

I witnessed and indeed participated in a classic awkward.com moment very recently. I was at a parental unit's birthday party, so naturally the only representatives of "the young" as we are so condescendingly known as were just my brother and myself, outnumbered and surrounded by wise elders. This of course lead to thousands of "what are you up to now?" questions, which needless to say, I loathe. It's all very well when you are working at some amazing job and can happily prattle on about how wonderful your life is, but when you are unemployed and living with your parents and the days are frequently spent merely killing time between getting up in the morning and going to bed at night... it's not so easy. I am, however, no stranger to these social land mines and I think, defended myself pretty well with lots of sweeping statements, swift conversation changers and, obviously, copious amounts of wine.

Having determinedly battered the conversation away from myself and my lack of prospects I was enjoying an extremely neutral and pleasant conversation with one of my parents oldest male friends about, that well-tapped common ground "travel". To be more precise, "places in the world I would simply luuurvve to visit". Sweet, I thought to myself, all this requires is a few choice nods and plenty of hyperbolic "oh I've heard that it's GORGEOUS there", so basically no brain power required and I can concentrate on getting merrily pissed and thinking about the usual mundane things which fill my brain. Perfect.

Or not, as the case may be.

Things were going fine, the waitress had just topped up both of our respective glasses with wine and we were discussing the many appeals of South America. As it would turn out, some things closer to home also held an equal amount of appeal. This I discovered when, said ancient and familiar family friend stopped abruptly mid discussion to inform me that:

"doesn't that waitress have the kind of look about her which makes you want to take her outside into a dark alley and give a good seeing to! Guffaw! Guffaw!"

...Righto. I did, tactfully inform him that it was me he was talking to, not an Italian builder, and then I helplessly stared at my fork, as if it could somehow help me.

awkward.com