Humor 2

“Well this just got awkward.”

This statement often applies to my life in many situations, and this week it definitely was right on par. Thomas and I were studying with two of our friends in my sorority house chapter room on Tuesday night. We had finished preparing for our presentation on Wednesday and were all just doing our own homework and casually chatting intermittently. Then 11:30 comes around and I am ready for bed (for those of you who know me well you know that this is actually uncharacteristically late for me to study, lame I know.) I had completed my to do list for the day and began to pack up my backpack so that I could go upstairs and go to bed.

This is where things started to get awkward. I had mentioned to Thomas like “hey I think I am done studying” before I began to pack up, but he didn’t pick up on this hint. Thinking that he might not have heard me-because this often occurs with us- I repeated myself again, “so yeah, I think I am going to go to bed.” He acknowledged me and then kept just chatting with our friends across the table. Growing impatient, I finally just blatantly blurted out, “are you going to pack up or what?”

(1) In my defense, this seemed like the natural thing for him to do since I was done studying. Normally when I am done studying at like 9:30 (don’t judge me), he will pack and go back to study on his own until the wee hours of the morning. Not this night though. And (2) What’s about to happen is even more comedic because just a few hours earlier when we had finished preparing for our presentation Thomas had started to pack up. I was under the impression we were studying together for the night, while he thought that I was probably going to bed.

“What, can’t Thomas stay and hang out with us?” my friend Kiley asked inquisitively. This definitely took me by surprise. Why would he want to hang out in our stuffy, girly chapter room for longer than necessary? Looking back I guess it wouldn’t have been weird for him to stay and chat and study with our mutual friends downstairs, but in the moment this caught me completely off guard. I’m pretty sure I gave him a look like he just had ripped the head off of a teddy bear or something completely terrifying because he immediately started packing up. “Well this is awkward” Kiley pointed out-she always makes a point of reminding me about how awkward I make situations or am as a person.

This awkward assumption that I made perpetuated to what is now a series of inside jokes about Thomas being in the house. “Thank goodness I got that dangerous man out!” I joked with Kiley as I walked upstairs after Thomas left. To which she responded something like, “phew, yeah I knew you couldn’t trust him down here alone.”

These funny moments of miscommunication and assumptions, plague my everyday life. They make for funny stories, but when they are with unfamiliar people things can get really uncomfortable. Thankfully, Tuesday was in the company of good friends and nobody got too offended or was too surprised, as I mentioned miscommunication tends to happen a lot for me somehow. This situation was funny to me because I was the one person out of four who didn’t think about the situation similarly, creating a definite (you guessed it) cognitive shift.