Confessions of the World's Most Socially Awkward Person

I'm such a socially awkward person. Every time I tell my husband my latest awkward moment of the day he always assures me that these things only seem to happen to me and that I seem to be a magnet for embarrassing calamity. Some of them are small and seem to be an almost daily occurrence like the time I told an acquaintance of mine about a weird baby name I had heard only to find out that her daughter shared the same name, or when I asked my mother in law if her new hair-do was for Halloween (it wasn't) But some of them are big moments, that make me wish I could change my name and move to Mongolia.

So, confession time.

I confess that at my previous job my boss was a little person. He wasn't often in the office because he was out doing important boss things. One day I rounded a corner, walked smack into him, and knocked him down with my legs. And then to make bad matters worse I said, "I'm sorry I didn't see you!" And then I stammered, "Oh I didn't mean you were difficult to see.... Uh I just wasn't looking down there.... I mean, not that I need to look down to see you..." And it continued, in that horrifying vein, stammering inadvertently offensive things in between apologies until I finally slipped away into embarrassment oblivion. And to top it off, that was the first time I had ever met my boss.

I confess that when I waited tables in college, I was the worst waitress ever. We were supposed to grate cheese over each salad we served. It always took quite a while for the customer to say enough cheese and I used to zone out while I was working the slow, dull cheese grater. One day some little old lady with short curly hair leaned over to get something while I was grating the cheese. After a while I looked down to see I had been grating cheese not into the salad, but into her hair the whole time. I was mortified. It was a ton of cheese! But she hadn't noticed so I just sort of walked away and didn't mention it. She still had a mountain of cheese in her hair when she left the restaurant.

I confess that I think I committed the worst foot-in-the-mouth moment that has ever happened in the history of the world. A lady in my neighborhood threw her husband an 80th birthday party that I attended. It was in a church, there were speakers, there were musical numbers, there were flower arrangements... A few months later we were talking and she mentioned a song to me. I said, "Oh right, isn't that the one you played at your husband's funeral?" By funeral I meant birthday party...

I confess that I kind of sort of called the cops on my neighbor one day when he came over to borrow an egg. To be fair, it was a neighbor that I had only seen at night so I didn't recognize even though we had talked several times and there had just been a bunch of break-in's in our neighborhood and I was sort of going through a paranoid, protective new mother phase and I didn't really think the police would actually come! But come they did. Four squad cars, several policemen questioning neighbors and interviewing witnesses before they came to my door to tell me that my neighbor was just making peanut butter cookies.

Awkward.