A Field Guide to Awkward Silences Read Free Page B

all that remain to bedevil us.
    Once you get rid of all the biggest problems, once you realize you can avoid them, you start to think you can inoculate yourself against the minor ones too. Phone calls are awkward? Just text all the time. Going up to people and asking them on dates is mortifying? Don’t worry—now there’s an app for that! Not only don’t we have to deal with scurvy on a daily basis, but we don’t have to actually speak to another human in order to order a pizza.
    No wonder we think there must be some way to get out of life’s inherent awkwardness, scot-free.
    But how do you vaccinate yourself against failure?
    One way is to court it. Use irony. Try without really trying.
    I’m not the only one I know who grew up doing this. Dancing around awkwardness is something we do. We are vigorously, painfully self-aware princesses waiting to call out the pea under the mattress. Look at all those earnest people throughout history! Hippies, flappers, Napoleon! Look how idiotic they were! We would never look so stupid, unless it was on purpose.
    We call attention to awkwardness as soon as it flares up so we can’t be accused of being oblivious. We keep announcing to theworld how little we’ve studied so we can’t be called dumb. We put ourselves down before others can get the chance. Whenever anything seems like it’s on the verge of becoming earnest, we come blasting out with snark.
    Don’t be too earnest. Don’t look like you care. Then you’re vulnerable. Life is full of opportunities for rejection, and if you start really trying, you’re going to start really failing. Hard. And it’ll hurt.
    So we put on dopey glasses and grimace so no one can tell us we’re not pretty. We drink lousy beer so no one can accuse us of having bad taste. We look stupid on purpose out of fear of looking stupid by accident. We don’t even
try
to dance. Anything to postpone the moment when we are actually going to have to stand up, put ourselves out there, and be told it’s not good enough.
    The result of all these carefully assembled layers of irony?
    We get to feel that, if we look like idiots, it’s because we meant to. That we never failed, because we never actually tried. They never saw the real us, lurking inside, the ones who could have done it, if they’d wanted to.
    But after a point that’s a pretty thin satisfaction.
    And the trade-off is brutal. You never get to know if you would have made it or not. Maybe you wouldn’t have looked stupid. Maybe you’d have been incredible.
    So why not take the leap? We’re all weird. We’re all awkward. We’re all bound to fail from time to time. It’s in our DNA as human beings . . . along with a certain innate wariness of mammoths.

Five Uneasy Pieces
    Some are born awkward. Some achieve awkwardness. Some have awkwardness thrust upon them.
    In my case, it was all three.
    I am not boasting when I say this. I am simply stating a fact.
    Just to give you a general sense of my Supreme Capacity for Awkwardness, here is a casebook of five of the most awkward things that I have ever done. What strikes me about these, in retrospect, is that in every case I was genuinely trying to
avoid
awkwardness. I remember looking at each of these situations, as it began. “This is going to be awkward,” I said to myself each time. “I had better think of a clever way around this.”
    That was the key to all of these scenarios. I really thought I was making it better.
    I was not.
    Problem: Couple having public fight directly in front of me.
    Awkwardness Level: 3
    Solution: Pretend to be insane.
    I was standing in line to get frozen yogurt. There was a couple fighting. Loudly. I couldn’t help noticing them. Possibly I was staring, just a little.
    The man noticed me. “You see?” he said. “People are staring.”
    “I don’t care if they
are
staring,” the woman said.
    “I’m so sorry you have to witness this,” the man said, turning to me directly.
    I froze. Well, I thought.