It's not all about me, or even my cat.

I mean, it is, so far. But I'm hoping to inspire a little bit of response so that future posts will be less about me and Mr. Kitty and more about the plight of the common man/woman/cat. But first, some more about me...

I can make just about anything awkward. Sometimes I wonder if I have a secret need to sabotage myself, or if maybe my naturally ginger hair has offended the powers that be, or if maybe it’s because of that one time I got a wrongly directed birthday card in the mail from someone else’s grandma and I spent the $25 therein… Whatever, it could be anything. I may or may not be cursed. Bottom line: if there’s a way to make a situation uncomfortable, I will find it.

Don’t believe me? Just off the top of my head, here are some normal things that most functioning members of society can manage pretty easily, and how I have handled them:

Going to the gym: have you ever seen a 5'4" tomato on a treadmill? No, and you never will, because exercise is, to me, a very private experience – so private that even I’m not there!

In a similar vein, sports: while figures of authority have often remarked that I am “surprisingly quick,” there are very few team sports in which I excel. Now I can't prove this, but I'm almost 100% positive my soccer team threw a party because I was leaving. 

Here’s a picture of me playing sports.

Basic domestic skills: I have accidentally put the wrong kind of soap into the dishwasher, resulting in an unstoppable, room-consuming cascade of bubbles, not once but three times. Three different dishwashers. It also once happened in a hot tub, but that’s neither here nor there. And I was gonna wash my sheets, but then I was like, they’re already on the bed…so…

Parties: why hello, couch in corner of porch! You look like a perfectly good place to sit and smoke and text. Why hello, host! Yes, I did know someone here, but they…I think they’re in the bathroom. Also, I accidentally burnt a hole in this couch, I hope it wasn’t sentimental. Whatever, I was about to leave anyway, it smells like burnt couch up in here.

Vacations: what a happy, fun time for friends and family to relax! Not if you’re travelling avec moi. I’ve been escorted out of Disneyland, half-drowned in both Belize and Venice, had sticks thrown at me by locals in Salzburg (the bike lane was not clearly marked), and everywhere I went in Mexico, people kept asking, “Why is your hair so red?” Gosh I don’t know, amigo, que sera...wait.

Well excuse ME, Mr. MOUSE, but I think YOU'RE the one disturbing the children. 

Driving a car: One time at a stoplight, a bum walked over to my open window to ask for a cigarette. He caught me picking my nose. Not my proudest moment, but I'll probably never see him again, right? Right.

Running into old classmates that you were never really friends with, but you both know that you know each other: I usually figure the best thing to do is just smile and wave. They usually pretend not to see me.

Talking to boys: ...there’s only so long any one person can pretend to be interested in pictures of cats.

Talking to girls: Oh my god I love your shoes! Long pause. Uh, so…do you like cats?

 I said, DO YOU LIKE CATS, WOMAN?

You get the idea. If I wanted to write a blog based entirely on my own life and the myriad of embarrassments it provides, then I could go on forever. But part of the reason I don’t mind laughing about these incidents is that I still cling to a secret hope that I am not the only person these things happen to. I mean, hopefully not these things EXACTLY, but, you know, other awkward things.

So I’m very much hoping that you, reader, will comment here and tell me what kind of uncomfortable scenarios plague you on a regular basis. If you do, then I will write about them. And even if I don’t have a solution for the awkwardness, I can at least tell you how I would act, and then you can do the exact opposite of that. Family functions? First dates? Internet small talk? Avoiding your ex? Sneezing in class? Finding out the hard way that you’re too fat for the rope swing (that’s a story for another day...)? Lay it on me, and no matter how embarrassing the topic, I can almost guarantee that I will make it seem better, if only by comparison!