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Written wisdom: The perks of being an awkwardflower

I knew that the locksmith was going to check the doors on my hall between the hours of ten and four yesterday. I did not know, however, that he was going to be in my section of the hallway at the very moment at which I was getting out of the shower, clad only in a towel. And yet I did, in fact, end up having a conversation with an elderly, rotund, and very embarrassed locksmith. Having assured him that he did have the right to check the lock on my door, I wandered back into my room, half-naked and laughing.

At one point in my life, this might have made me blush. But my life is regularly awkward enough that it didn’t. And I thought about what that says about me, and I realized—it’s probably a good thing.

A friend of mine recently said that, if she wanted to have it together all of the time, she could, but the time and energy she’d have to spend on it isn’t worth the aversion of a bit of awkward here and there. And I think she’s right. There are much better tasks on which to focus one’s efforts (like homework and narcissistic blog posts). 

There are, of course, situations wherein one needs to have it together, and wherein being collected is important. But if I get to class prepared, come through for the people I say I’ll come through for, and do my best to live my life as a decent human being, then it doesn’t really matter if I talk too much or laugh too loudly or gesticulate too wildly or greet and chat with locksmiths whilst wearing only a towel (check, check, check, and check).

Being awkward is, in its own bizarre way, great. Because eventually, you realize that these incidents, embarrassing and weird and unfortunate as they may be, just happen. They’re a part of life. And one can fight them or hide from them or blush or cringe. Or one can shrug them off and find the humor in the situation (which, ironically, is something that the Jersey Shore’s “The Situation” rarely does).

There’s a sense of self that comes with being awkward, a confidence that has no reason to be there but is. It’s the sense that it’s okay to laugh at oneself, to see the absurd, and to find oneself in a situation and say, “Actually, objectively, this is kind of funny. Oh, you feel weird? Sorry. That must be awkward.”