Apr 17, 2023

Awkward Is as Awkward Does (Well, That was Awkward)

15 tips on getting out of an embarrassing situation

By Ed Goldman

Question: Do you ever find yourself in an awkward moment? If the answer’s no, you’d best call your health professional. You may, in fact, be dead.

But if you passed the fog-a-mirror test, you’ll have plenty of your own awkward moments to add to this list. Let me hear from you (goldman4@earthlink.net)—unless it makes you feel, you know, kind of awkward. 

Edgy Cartoon

When you know you just know. Y’know?

  1. Meeting new in-laws, whether by phone, Zoom or in person. Especially when you find out this is the first they heard you even existed. (Tip: Look at your new spouse and say, “Where am I?” or the much more amusing, “And you are…?”)
  2. Pretending you know a lot about wine, coffee, gourmet food or the U.S. Constitution and finding the other guests at the dinner party you’re attending are, respectively, a vintner, coffee grower, host of a TV cooking show and the late U.S. Supreme Court Justice Anthony Scalia. (Tip: Feign amnesia and call Uber. Or feign COVID and let everyone else call Uber.)
  3. When you’re presented with an acquaintance’s brand new, profoundly unattractive baby. (Tip: My mom used to say, “Now, that’s a baby!”)
  4. After attending the premier of a relative’s first and remarkably awful play or film and you’re asked for “your candid opinion.” (Tip: Orson Welles used to say, “There are no words…” and let his voice trail off.)
  1. What to say to a newly married couple whose marriage clearly won’t last out the year, or maybe even the month. (Tip: “I left the tags on the present in case you need to return anyone. I mean return anything. Or everything. Oops.”)
  2. While hosting dinner guests who’ve newly hooked up if you were close to one of the former partners. (Tip: “Alas, my memory fails me. Are you the one who prefers drinking Tanqueray straight from the bottle?”)
  3. Apologizing to your significant other when you know, down to your toes, that you have absolutely nothing to apologize for. (Tip: Do it anyway. You’ll do something to merit your contrition sooner or later.)
  4. What to say when someone has just had an obvious facelift. (Tip: It isn’t, “Oh, I’m sorry you couldn’t make it here tonight.” Legit tip: “Have you been working out?”)
  1. On mistaking a young person’s partner, whom you’ve just met, for his or her parent. (Tip: “I’m so sorry. I’d heard his/her parents were incredibly youthful looking. So I just assumed…”)
  2. Not realizing that among the guests your co-host invited and have just arrived are Satanists, nudists or members of the Nazi party. (Tip: Consider drinking Tanqueray straight from the bottle.)
  3. Reacting when your new lover shows you her scrapbook and you discover she casually dated the Hell’s Angels, had been engaged to the Green Bay Packers or was married to Congressman Matt Gaetz (R-Mars). (Tip: Pretend you’re receiving an emergency alert on your smartphone that a swarm of locusts is on your doorstep demanding entry.)
  4. Asking someone who isn’t a trans person about what life’s like as a trans person. (Tip: One way to back away from this is to say you were misinformed that the person you’re talking to is a famous sociological researcher for Stanford writing “the definitive study about gender orientation.” Another is to feign a peanut-allergy attack, provided you’ve ascertained there are exposed nuts in the room. Other than you. And yours.)
  1. Realizing you said something overly empathetic—”Oh, I know just what you’re going through!”—to someone whom you think can’t cope with a visible challenge, such as a limp, skin discoloration, adult-onset acne or lycanthropy. (Tip: When the person replies, “What do you think I’m going through, and why?”, act as though you were talking to someone standing in the next room. If the person then says, “Who?” you might want to say, “Well, I’m sure they wouldn’t want me to draw attention to it. Do you know if there’s a bar here, you impossibly normal looking person?”)
  2. When asked your preference about something as innocuous as how you’d like your hamburger barbecued and you respond by saying, “Well, you know me…” and it falls on dead silence. Because nobody really doesknow you. (Tip: Make believe you said, “Well, you’ll owe me—when I tell you how I like my burgers!”)
  3. When someone says something insulting to you rather quietly but the rest of the room bursts into applause. (Tip: Astral-project your way out of that house and into the clothes of someone else a few miles away. Then call Uber, go home and drink Tanqueray straight from the bottle.)

Ed Goldman's column appears almost every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. A former daily columnist for the Sacramento Business Journal, as well as monthly columnist for Sacramento Magazine and Comstock’s Business Magazine, he’s the author of five books, two plays and one musical (so far).