A Morning of Awkward Moments...

Ladies and gentleman it is a nippy 36 degrees this morning and today is going well thus far. Only sixteen more hours left to make an even bigger fool of myself. This morning started off a bit shaky and went down hill from there. So I'm driving to work, listening to the radio and trying to get into the office on time. As I'm nearing an intersection I start thinking to myself, "If the light went yellow, would I have enough time to make it?" Well, sure enough, the light went yellow...I panicked. I started to give it gas and then thought, "Well crap, what if it goes solid red when I'm just starting to speed through?" So I ease off the gas. Then of course I start playing devil's advocate with myself and think, "Well no time to slow down now." So I speed up again (all in a few seconds time) and somehow during all the shifting and easing on and off the gas and thinking to myself, I don't notice that the engine died and needed to be restarted so I start coasting through the intersection...slowly...and everyone waiting at the light is staring at me. I didn't know what to do so I did the quick hand wave and mouthed the mandatory "sorry" when you're a dang fool holding everyone up. Yeesh. The rest of the way to work I had anxiety whenever I was approaching the lights and prayed they'd just stay green. Prayer works people. Green all the way.

After parking, I head to the building. It's a nice morning. A bit cold, but nice. As I near the doors, I see my friend Carlos in landscaping. He says hi to me and what do I say back? Well, there's my split second thinking to myself again. Usually when I see people I say "Good morning." Or "Hey." What I wind up saying was a mesh between the two which came out "Gay morning Carlos." Yikes. Carlos looks at me all weird and I just shake my head and walk past him. I can't be trusted to keep talking.

I finally get to my office and put my coat and bags away. I remember that I need to take some papers to one of the ladies upstairs so I decide to take care of that first. I grab the papers and head for the elevator. When the elevator doors open, I get in and by habit, I hold down the 'close doors' button. As soon as I push the button, I see a lady round the corner and she says to me, "Hold the elevator!" I tell her no problem, I'll hold it. As I finish saying this, I realize my finger is STILL on the 'close doors' button. The elevator doors begin to shut and instead of sticking my hand in the door to keep it from closing, I decide to push the button that opens the elevator doors. Well, freak. Apparently elevators have not one but TWO "close doors" buttons. I wind up closing the doors in the lady's face and all I could do was shout "Sorry! I'm so sorry!" *Sigh...I got to the floor I needed, dropped off the papers and headed back toward the elevators. I push the "Down" button and wait. The elevator dings to signal it's reached my level and the doors open. Inside is the lady I shut the doors on. Awwwwkwaaarrrdddd. I stand there for a minute and finally she says in a mocking tone, "Don't worry. I'll hold the doors for you." I give her an apologetic look and get on. Of course, the awkward moment commenced when I realized that she was going up and I in fact needed to go down. So I had to ride with the lady up a few floors before I could go back down. Come on people. You've been in the awkward elevator situation before. You're in an enclosed space with a stranger and now you've got to decide whether or not to talk to the person or to pull out your phone and pretend to text people. Or in some cases, you put your phone up to your ear like you're listening to your voicemail or "talking" to someone in which case you have to basically have a pretend conversation with nobody on the phone. (Note: If you're going to take the pretend conversation route, hurry and put your phone on silent or vibe so as not to look like a moron when someone actually calls. Trust me.) Lucky for me, I didn't have to choose because stranger lady took out her phone and commenced the pretend texts to a friend. You know it's pretend when they start to mouth the words that they're supposedly texting. I finally returned to my office and looked at the clock. Twenty minutes. I had parked in the parking lot twenty minutes ago...Ugh. It's going to be a very long day.