Awkward Moments...

You know the moments I'm talking about. The moments between strangers when life stops for a moment while you wait to see what the other person is going to do. Most commonly having to do with walking. At work we have about a three person wide hall-way, and in the middle of this hallway is a regular sized doorway, that only fits one. And there is not a door...so I consistently find myself walking towards it and noticing that there is someone walking the other way that is about the same distance away. I hate that door. Without fail you get to a couple of feet away and you wait to see whether the other person will speed up or not. Except...they also slow down to wait...causing an awkward moment.

I had another one today. I was walking from my car to the office and I was probably 3 or 4 steps behind a guy in front of me. The sidewalk is a two-laner. Two people walking side-by-side can get away with it...but...it's intimate. So I'm walking and the guy in front of me stops. He's fixing his gloves or he's putting something in his backpack or something. Not a big deal, there's room to pass...I keep my pace and start walking by. Well...he finishes whatever he's doing at the very moment I'm right next to him. So he starts walking again. So...we are walking side by side in a way...I might even feel weird about with a friend. I might even try to stagger it if I was walking and talking with someone. But we were shoulder to shoulder, elbow to elbow. And we were going at exactly the same speed...and there was no sign of one of us naturally speeding up past the other one. Now...we walked like this for like 4 or 5 paces, which you may not think is a lot. But it was enough for me to think..."What the heck? This is weird...I either need to slow down or speed up." I normally like speeding up in walking encounters because you have more options...if you slow down and they are slow (or just feel slow after walking faster) then you have to walk behind them at their pace. But I was pretty much already walking at max comfortable pace. I mean I could have booked it...but I still had 12 minutes of walking left...I desired a comfortable gait. So we've already gone several steps, and you can't just gradually slow down because...you'd still be walking next to him until he moves forward. So I decide to pretty much just stop and move in behind him. Well...at this moment, I think he finally notices me. He's been wearing a hood, which I can only imagine was impeding his vision. But for some reason, stopping (or almost stopping) caught his eye and he looked up like, "Why are you walking next to me?" But I think he quickly realized the situation, and told me to go ahead, in which I then took the lead and walked at a comfortable pace with little more than the thought of blogging about the experience to occupy my mind. So like most of life's awkward moments, ended anticlimactically...but is torture in the moments during the encounter.

So here's to awkward moments! Feel free to share your own.