Tova Darling's Totally Awkward Tuesdays II (aka "My real name is Simon Cowell")

Once again, I'm participating in Tova Darling's Totally Awkward Tuesdays event.* If you want to participate, too, click on the link and follow the instructions on her blog. Come on! Play along! It's fun!

At one of my prior jobs, we used to have a big potluck "holiday party" once a year. We'd all bring a dish to share, and some folks would put together a program to entertain us -- people singing and playing instruments and such. Some years, the performers were pretty decent. Other years... not so much.

I was sitting in my colleague's office talking with her about the upcoming holiday party and her plans to skip it that year. She said she didn't usually enjoy it, because she didn't like having to pretend to like the entertainment when in fact she found it tolerable at best and painfully bad at worst, and the food generally was merely so-so and high-calorie / diet-busting besides.

She stopped talking sort of abruptly, but did I pick up on the clue? Heck no. I just jumped right in, enthusiastically replying, "Oh, come on, the entertainment can't be as bad as last year's, can it?... (no response)... I mean, there's nowhere to go but "up" from there, right?..... (still no response, but her eyes got a little wider).... I mean, that was rock bottom, this year is bound to be better, right?".... (still no response, just a sort of quick head shake and that wide-eyed stare)....

... and then the dawning realization that there was a reason for my co-worker's lack of response.... and then I turned around to find last year's "star" performer standing in the doorway behind me.

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There's really nothing I could have done to make that better, was there?

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* Don't start thinking I will do this every week. Because even though I probably do enough awkward things to post these every day, I do have an image of urbane sophistication to maintain, so I can't go posting about *every* doofusy thing I do....

Ok, I admit, it's not about my image. It's just that my memory isn't all that great to begin with (I subscribe to Homer Simpson's theory of memory -- "Every time I learn something new, it pushes some old stuff out of my brain. Remember when I took that home winemaking course, and I forgot how to drive?"), and also because I tend to suppress most of my bad memories of me being awkward, so that I don't crumble into a ball of blubbering self-pity at how horribly socially inept I am.

So the point is, enjoy my awkward stories while they last. Because they might not last!

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