"I'm legitimate."

"Which one of these is maroon?" Why the hell do I always play on maroon sports teams? Is it some kind of crazy masochism or a horrible cosmic joke? I swear, I've played on them since elementary school soccer. I love Virginia Tech football. And I've never been able to distinguish maroon from green.

"This one is. Wait, why are you asking?"

Because I want to make sure my bionic eye is working right. "Because I'm colorblind."

"Yeah, but, why is it so important that you have maroon striped socks?" Oh, right. I guess my visibly poor grasp of fashion as a concept, combined with my already established fundamental ineptitude with respect to color matching or management, make that the more important question to be asking.

It's several months ago. I am in American Apparel in Carytown, which, inside my mind, I like to think of as "Hipster Hooters." There are two incredibly pretty (and relentlessly trendy looking) girls working there, which seems to happen every time I walk into that store.

I'm there for maroon striped socks, and also because I have a friend (a guy) who works there. The socks are supposed to match the maroon uniform I wear to play a ridiculously elementary-school type sport, which practically begs to be accompanied with striped socks. I also kind of want to say hi to that guy, because he's cool.

But my biggest problem, once I'm holding a pair of socks in each hand, is identifying maroon. For all I know, I'm holding dark green and normal brown socks in my hands. So I go up to the cutest retail sales clerk I've ever seen and ask for a second opinion.

And, you know, in the course of learning about colors as though I were in pre-school, I actually had a very nice, pleasant conversation with this girl. It wasn't awkward at all, once we got it all straight that I was actually genetically handicapped when it comes to maroon, and not just screwing around. There was no awkwardness that I could detect.

Yet.

But then I remember: is my friend working today? I ask, but it turns out that he isn't. Oh well.

So all of a sudden I'm thinking to myself that you just don't have very nice, pleasant conversations with the cutest retail sales clerk you've ever seen every day. No, sir. I have to say something. What do I say? Something, fast! Wait, she knows my friend, right?

"Thanks for helping me. And, hey, you should ask my friend about me sometime. He'll tell you I'm legitimate."

Does that even mean anything? Is that English? What am I trying to accomplish? Look, why don't you ask my friend about me - he'll verify that I am not a figment of your imagination. The girl laughs and walks away to go be cute and trendy somewhere else. Well, fortunately no one else heard me be ridiculous.

Oh, wait. I forgot about the other cutest retail sales clerk I've ever seen. When I turn to the register, C.R.S.C. 2 rolls her eyes and says, "Okay, legitimate guy. I'll ring you up."

I didn't even say anything this time and it was still a disaster

Yesterday I was sitting on my couch with my laptop, trying to type up a blog post. What was I going to write about? I really hadn't said anything awkward to a girl in a while. Some of my relatives said some awkward things, but that just didn't feel the same. I had an old thing that I might post on Thursday, but I kind of want Monday blog posts to be new awkward things.

Oh well. It was time to go play football with my friends up on Leigh Street. I closed my laptop, put my shoes on, and headed out to the car.

It was an incredible day outside, but I felt like I wanted to put on a track jacket, to, you know, protest global warming I guess. I had one in my trunk. I unlocked the trunk and opened it, then pulled out the jacket. As I looked up, I noticed a cute girl walking towards me on the sidewalk on the other side of the street.

Oh my goodness, I thought. Is she looking at me? Seriously, she just looked again!

So then I set down my car keys and put on the jacket. I brushed my hair out of my eyes cinematically and then looked over. Oh man, she was totally checking me out. Awesome. I closed the trunk.

On my keys. My keys were in my trunk. See, this is why I'll never run out of awkward things to write about.

"I'd like more of you in my lifestyle."

"You're not thinkin' I'm someone else?" Great first line, Tony. I like the approach.

"I know you are not." Good tactic, Maria. Commit to nothing, wait for Tony's next move.

"Or that we met before?"

"I know we have not." Maria's a pro.

I’m watching West Side Story, and I’m excited. Here's the moment of truth for Tony.

"I felt . . . "

Come on, Tony. Enough small talk. Blow us away.

"I knew something never before was going to happen." Short pause. "Had to happen. But this is so much more."

Wait. What? Is that even English? Hold on. I can't believe what I just heard.

See. I swear it isn't just me. Even Tony, the coolest guy in the coolest gang on the West Side of New York, can't say anything remotely coherent when he talks to girls.

After I finished watching West Side Story for the first time, I wondered two things: first off, there were three super hot girls who were single at the end of that movie due to gang warfare. How soon before one of the guys in one of the gangs starts dating one of them? Is six weeks enough? Three months? Does it depend on whether he was in the same gang as their boyfriend, or is it worse if it is a guy in the rival gang? What's the ruling on that? Plus, which girl is the first to start dating again? I say it's the American girl, and she ends up going for a Shark out of some crazy subconscious blame-issues, and all of the Jet guys are jealous, so it starts the rivalry all over again, until Maria gets wind of the whole thing, and yells at them until they feel guilty, so they all end up getting drunk together at the wedding reception, become friends, and hook up with each other’s sisters, which is pretty much what they all just needed to do from the beginning.

But the other thing I wondered was this. Did the awkwardness of that first interaction not even matter? See, I’m starting to wonder whether it even makes a difference how awkward you are when you talk to girls. It's all about how interested the girl is in you aside from the things that you say. Or, alternately, how interested she isn’t.

Here’s an example of the latter.

Maybe a year and a half ago, I went to a party with one of my friends. There were all kinds of people there and it really was a lot of fun. I even ran into a girl I knew from high school and caught up a little. But most fun of all, I got a minor slightly-drunk-style crush on a cute and smart-seeming red-haired girl, who kept making fun of me sarcastically, which kind of made me interested.

So when I'm leaving the party, I say this to her: "Hey, listen. I'd like more of you in my lifestyle."

Okay, so that's the worst thing ever. Guys: never say that to a girl. Personally, at the (reasonably drunk) time, I thought it accurately conveyed the more-or-less interested state I was in, but when the cruel, cold light of morning cast rays of reality into my hung-over brain, I realized how awkward it sounded when it came out of my mouth.

Ah! But! Remember what Tony said to Maria when they first met? After some "Have we met?" chatter, here's Tony's big line:

"I knew something never before was going to happen. Had to happen. But this is so much more."

Now, seriously. If I walked up to a cute girl at a bar and said that, it would be a disaster, and I'd have to put it in this blog. It is actually a little creepy sounding. Dude, I know she's been making doe-eyes at you and swaying around, but you can’t let yourself get carried away like that. At least make sentences, is my motto (a motto I relax considerably when writing this blog, for which I apologize, especially if you are the best grammar teacher in the world).

But then again, who cares if you’re awkward? Maria sure didn’t. See, that's exactly the issue. Maria thinks this guy is all kinds of hot. The girl I said the ridiculous/awkward/creepy thing to about lifestyles, well, I don't think she did at all. So it doesn't matter what I would have said. How do I know? Do you remember what Maria said to Tony after his brilliant little speech? She interrupts him to say:

"My hands are cold."

!

My hands are cold! Brilliant move, Maria. Oh, man, that just killed me to hear it. Because, honestly, everyone knows what happens after that. There's some physical contact, touching of faces, people call each other "beautiful," and before you know it, Maria and Tony are making out. Oh, that's championship level material right there. My hands are cold! That's just fabulous.

Now, back to my story. And here's how I know that girl wasn't that into me, so it didn't matter what I said. I'm affectionately drunk, which is scientific term for me when I have pretty much any BAC above zero, and I say "I'd like more of you in my lifestyle." The response?

"Uh, that was kind of an awkward thing to say. No, seriously. That was kind of weird.”

So, right. I think at the time I was annoyed at myself for being such a disaster. But who cares? Someday I'm going to be saying a ridiculous thing to a girl like I always do, but she's going to cut me off and say her hands are cold, and reach out as though she wants me to hold her hands, and then I'll know - this one kind of likes me. Just you watch.

Girls are not deaf, apparently.

I'm sitting in my cubicle doing work. All of a sudden, a really cute girl walks into my cubicle.

Here's the thing. There aren't very many cute girls who work in my building, mostly due to the fact that my company employs a ridiculous amount of 33-year-old men. And anyway, I know who all the cute ones in my building are. Cute girls that I've never seen before walk into my cubicle unannounced about once every never. What does this one want? Does she want to talk to me about a work thing? Will I get to have a conversation with her? Maybe she really likes my analysis and wants to learn what makes me so amazing at my job! I'm instantly excited.

So I say, "Hi!" in a really loud and friendly voice. A bit too loudly, though. She jumped, and I think I heard an echo. She did say "Hi" back, though. Softly.

Then she watered the plant and walked away.

"I'm going to go talk to my friends now. Goodbye."

Sometimes I'm wondering to myself as I post these posts - are these really that awkward? I mean, some of the things I've posted seem kind of normal to me. I make them worse by emphasizing how awkward I felt while saying them, which pretty much means I just describe the everyday workings of the interior of my mind. But honestly, who hasn't walked up to a girl and said that it was their job to distract that girl while their friend hit on the girl's friend? Who indeed.

Then again, maybe I'm still not yet fully aware of the fact that my internal awkward-scale isn't a highly calibrated precision instrument. I don't have to be thinking "holy crap, this interaction I'm having with another human being is a disaster" for what I'm saying to be, empirically, absolutely ridiculous.

Here's a good experiment. I'll describe what I felt was an entirely successful (I felt) interaction with a girl just last evening. You can judge for yourself whether or not it was its own little disaster. I really don't care whether you think it's hilarious or not, because, "them apples" and so forth, she gave me her number.

So:

I'm out at a bar where a friend's band is playing a show. I notice a strikingly cute girl a few tables away. I make what I think (through her hot-girl glasses) is eye contact with her a few times, then she decides to come sit down at my table.

Wait. Hold that thought for a second.

First, to set the scene properly, and in the interest of full disclosure, I must mention a few facts. Fact one: I spilled beer on myself about 2 minutes before the event I just mentioned. It wasn't my fault, unless you blame me for nursing my beer so slowly that I spent literally 30 minutes walking around with a 95% full beer until, finally, someone elbowed me right in the pint glass. So, maybe it was my fault.

Fact two: I was uncomfortable, what with the sopping wet shirt, so I unbuttoned my shirt all the way. Sue me. I had an undershirt on, the t-shirt kind with sleeves. It was totally fine. Maybe it was a fashion faux pas, but it's not as though I was firing on all fashion cylinders to begin with. I was wearing pants and a shirt. Lets not nitpick.

To continue:

She's now sitting at my table. I am almost delusionally convinced that this is due to me being ultra-hot. Maybe I lured her over with my unbuttoning. Uh, no - actually, she already knew two of my friends, and really didn't want to pay attention to me much at all.

But I mean, I played it cool. I waited for pauses in the conversation so I could say a few natural, normal things to her, like:

"So, what's your scene?"

To which she responded various sweet nothings, like so:

"What?"

Which, really, isn't as bad as it could be. I'll take a solid "what?" any day. But then, before long, she's gone. Gone! Back to two tables away before I can work up the courage to say anything coherent.

But really - who needs coherent? Not me. I don't need planning, foresight, or deliberation either. Action and results, those are what I'm interested in. I mention to the friend that knows her best: hey - seriously, what IS her scene? Could she be the girl for me?

"Maybe, but..."

Maybe is all I need. As I said: action. Instantly my beer is set down (why do I take my beer everywhere in a bar, but set it down when I go to talk to a girl?) and I'm on my way. I stop next to the girl. And what follows is the (annotated) conversation in its entirety. Awkward? You be the judge. Here we go:

"Hi, so, do you like Richmond?" I have no idea what to say, ever. That's all I could come up with. Sorry ladies. If you want creativity, read the blog.

"Yes." Okay. Fantastic. So far, so good. It doesn't take much to impress me. But by now, this conversation has gone on much too long. I could screw it up any second. Lets start cutting to chases.

"Would you like to go on a date with me?" Whoa, there. Lets slow that gallop down to a trot. Clearly I've gotten a bit too excited about being alive.

"Uh, maybe?" Don't blame you one bit, sweetheart. Frankly, I have no idea where that burst of exuberance came from. Maybe it's the beer. Most of which is on my shirt.

"What about if I called you?" Now we're back to the right speed.

"Okay."

So at this point I reach for my cell phone. Maybe a better man would be celebrating at this point. Me, I'm thinking: oh no.

Now, longtime readers of this blog, those who've been around for more than, oh, a week, know that I can't operate my cell phone under pressure. In fact, that has been a disaster for me in the past. Judging by my blog posts, I have a 50% likelihood of ending up with no phone number at all.

Plus, I have a new cell phone. I barely know how to answer calls. This drops the probability of me having the ability to ever call this girl to practically nothing.

So I get out the phone, I fumble for a while, I push some buttons, and meanwhile I keep a monologue going. "Wait - I don't know how to put a number in. Is it this button? No? I just got this phone, see, is the thing. Oh god, what just happened. Wait. Here we go. Hold on, how do you spell your name? By the way, I just spilled beer on myself, which is why my shirt is unbuttoned. And wet."

"Listen, I'll do it. Give me the phone." Saved! I don't have to operate machinery while drinking and under the influence of extreme cuteness. It's like an answered prayer. If answered prayers are supposed to make you feel embarrassed.

"This is slightly emasculating." Wow - way to precisely describe what everyone is thinking. Great work. It really is fabulous how easy it is to think of exactly the right words at the right moment only at the most embarrassing time.

"There you go." It takes her, oh, 0.8 seconds to put in a name and a number. I don't think I could dial my mother that quickly. Maybe I'm easily impressed, but now I kind of want to know if she plays video games.

But by this point, I'm out of ammo. I'm entirely spent. So all I've got left is:

"I'm going to go talk to my friends now. Goodbye."

Am I awkward? Maybe I am. Awkward like a fox!

"Like sexual intercourse. Do you know what that is?"

Last week I went on vacation in Europe with two friends. I viewed this as a good opportunity to say awkward things to international girls. I really didn't say anything nearly as awkward as what got said to me.

Don't worry, though, I'm not cured.

An extra-cute girl who looked to be in her early twenties (and who had ribbons in her hair which always just absolutely kill me) sat in the train car with my friends and I on the way to Vienna.
"What are you reading?" I asked her. She had some book in English she was slogging through.
"Oh, it's a diary of a girl." I think the girl had AIDS, or knew someone with AIDS. There was definitely AIDS.

To understand why my response was awkward, you have to understand how it was said and why it was said that way. The why is easy: I realized how stupid it was as it was coming out of my mouth. We'll do how as we go.

"Oh really!" I say, excited because I think I have a funny joke coming. Then, I realize that it isn't remotely even close to funny, causing me to trail off as I'm saying "I'm writing one of those!" My delivery thus undermined, the post-punchline denouement "What a coincidence." was crippled to the point of a mumble.

Awkward: yes. Maybe not the most awkward thing I've said in the last, um, day. But nowhere near as awkward as the things the Viennese girl said to me later on.
Here's one:

Viennese girl finds out that I'm trying to learn German, and decides to help. Can you count to ten? she asks. Well, not all the way to ten. I make it to "fünf" and look at her for help.

"Say after me: sechs"

"Say-cks?"

"No, sex. Like sexual intercourse, do you know what that is?"

Context is important. The awkwardness of that comment increased significantly once I found out that she was not, in fact in her early twenties, but was actually 18 and in high school.

"They have beds."

Here's a classic awkward thing to get you through your weekend.

Last winter I went to the ACC Championship Game so I could join a few friends in their consistent tradition of long road trips to see Virginia Tech lose to Florida State. We slept in Savannah. As we were leaving the motel room, some girls were walking by.
"Is this a good place to stay?" they asked. "It's not horrible, is it?"

One of my friends responded. "Sure, it's okay."

Now, I thought that was kind of a hilarious question. I mean, you've already booked the room. What are you going to do now? I suppose you could ask for a refund maybe, but that seems weird. I wouldn't do that. And what are we going to say? The TV gets really loud if you turn up the volume? The hot water doesn't grant magical powers? Watch out for the fact that it's a motel just like pretty much every motel I've ever stayed at? Seriously. I mean, I know that what the girls asked was a perfectly normal, reasonable, and legitimate thing to say to another human being in those exact circumstances, but it just struck me as also kind of hilarious in a way that I wanted to express.

The problem was that this entire train of thought passed through my brain in its entirety that morning. My friend said later that he saw the gears turning in my head. The girls had said "thanks" to him, turned, and walked probably 20 feet down the hallway before I managed to say, with a stupid grin on my face, causing at least one of the girls to half turn around with an awkward, "what is happening" expression on her face:

"Heh. I mean, they have beds!"