My love for awkward people comes from a place very, very deep inside me; some place like my diaphragm, or maybe even my small intestine. Having been an awkward person my whole life, I tend to sympathize with this breed of people with great ease. Actually, I take that back. I haven't been awkward my WHOLE life, just, lets say, the last twelve or so years. It started with the good old neighbourhood crew. I couldn't fit in. However, they would sometimes need me, to even out a number in a game or something, so once in a while I would be included. This is really where the trouble began. After an hour or two of cops and robbers, I would need to pee, and well, I didn't want to go inside and then come back out to find they'd carried on without me, and they'd realized that the slow, fat, annoying little girl (i.e. me), was actually of no use to them, and therefore wouldn't let me rejoin.
I never found out if that's what would have happened, because it always ended up unfolding a little differently... I would be sitting as quietly as possible behind a tree/car/planter/etc. and, well guess what? You can't stall going to the washroom forever. At first it would just be a little, you know, like if you're laughing really hard and you lose control for a split second. Then, it was like a chain reaction; it just didn't stop. So I'd run towards my house, not only giving away my position, but also giving away the fact that I was seven years old and should still be wearing diapers.
Big deal, you say. Well sure, I grew out of it eventually and life went on. But that installed a huge sense of insecurity in me for, well, my whole life at least until now, and probably for the rest of it too. It inhibits me from doing things like: Forming proper words/sentences when in the presence of someone that intimidates me; not turning as red as a baboon's ass at the slightest embarrassment; being capable of interacting in any normal way with the opposite sex; and controlling my random spastic movements and twitches once any of these previous things happen to me.
In conclusion, I am awkward. I don't care how much people tell me otherwise (which they don't, but if they did, I'd disagree). Despite this horrible, life-threatening disease, I've found a way to accept it. In fact, I truly, truly love awkwardness now. (Yes sometimes it takes a little thing called hindsight to appreciate my own, but I always come around in the end). I'm even starting to be attracted to it. Example: A grade nine boy manages to bump into about ten people, drop all his books and pens, lose a shoe trying to pick them up and apologize to all the people he's inconvenienced, all the while having a very red, very pained face. I stop, give him the once over, remember he's practically a baby, and keep walking. If only someone would have checked me out the time I actually slipped on a banana peel, or fell on my ass from slipping on the wet floor, or even the time I bailed while trying to take two stairs at a time, then stopping myself with a very tiny, very frightened grade eight boy.
Hmm, yes, if only...
10 comments:
thats a really flattering picture. i'm glad you caught us where we were at our best.
revenge will come swiftly, meg. just you wait.
I didn't understand some parts of this, but that's ok.
I laughed so hard at the pee part. Honestly, I needed that pick me up.
another fine post; i think you will someday write a great story or treatise about awkwardness. i must agree with your sister about the pee segue. you create a delightful and hilarious portrait of a little girl torn between her need to pee and to fit in. i could hear the sound of your voice when i read this story. that's what happens you read something written from the depths...
oh megan. now, i will admit that you are awkward. there is no denying it. you sometimes have this way of making me blush with the way you answer mme hains in french class when you don't know the answer to something. but i will also tell you that compared to when i first knew you, in grade 6, you were a whole lot more awkward than you are now. now, if i were someone who hadn't known you, and were meeting you for the first time i would call you a beautiful person who is not only witty, but kind-hearted and caring. your awkwardness has transformed you into someone who is soft-spoken because they don't want to be awkward and who's character is defined by what they think people want to see. and i mean that in the nicest way possible. you have changed sooo much and you are an awesome person. so no, you're not awkward, but awkwardness is a big part of you... if that makes any sense :P but that post was pretty hilar none the less. rofl at the pee part ( i was exactly the same way....)
Thanks chloe, I think I actually felt a tear well up.
"3rd Grader: Hey look everybody, Billy peed his pants.
Billy Madison: Of course I peed my pants, everyone my age pees their pants. It's the coolest.
3rd Grader: Really?
Billy Madison: YES. You ain't cool, unless you pee your pants.
3rd Grader: Hey look, Ernie peed his pants too. Alright!
Old Farm Lady: If peeing in your pants is cool, consider me Miles Davis.
Billy Madison: OOH. That is the grossest thing I've ever heard in my life. Let's Go."
I am linking you (if you don't mind!)
I don't recall you being fat!
I do remember you singing me a song when we were in grade 4 and I was too embarassed to sing you one. So I hid under my bed. I should bring you the picture of us in our sleeping bags.
I think the peeing thing must be hereditary and for that I apologize. But I don't think the kids on the block not including you in games, or choosing you first when they did include you, had anything to do with you being awkward. I think it had rather more to do with the fact that there is a pecking order amongst neighbourhood kids and you were the youngest.
I can remember playing hide and seek and staying in my mom's cupboard for what seemed like hours, only to emerge and find the kids I was playing with had quit the game 30 minutes before, and had started playing something else, without me.
bullamoocow
hmm, brian, it's always nice to hear the words of the sacred quoted, and, I so obviously knew that I was really the cool one on the street.
Natalia, I'd be honored to be linked to your blog, I'd do the same to you had I any idea how
bullamoocow I love to picture you as a little girl with crazy frizzy hair, and big rhinestone glasses, sigh, we would have been great friends.
i still pee my pants.
And chloe is right. you're awkwardness is a part of who you are but not the parts i know so well and love entirely.
And also let's ask ourselves? is it better to be left out as a kid because you're awkward or left out beacuse your TOO confident and no one likes you.
but what ev, we've found each other...and a third...what a tag along. :)
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