Ummm... Awkward!

What do you say to a long lost friend after a lengthy hiatus?  I'm sure it depends more on the friend and less on the length of the silence.  But let's just say it is a very good friend.  You could start by saying, "I'm sorry!"  But then you have to acknowledge your screwup.  You might even have to talk about feelings and emotion and all of that mess.  So enter the "I'm sorry" at your own risk.

You could take the other option.  You can walk up to them as though not a day has passed and everything is just like it was yesterday (or a month ago... who's counting).  That plan of action also assumes a certain set of risks.  Oddly, depending on the situation, you might get HIT before having to talk about the same feelings and emotions and all of that mess you were going to have to talk about if you had just said you were sorry. (You gotta love lose/lose situations!)

Then there's the one chance in a billion that you don't even have to say anything.  You just walk into the room and all things begin align.  The lights adjust.  Birds begin to chirp.  Music plays.  Food begins to prepare itself.  This kids stop making noise. What? Yeah, I lost myself at that one.  I should have stopped at the food preparing itself.  The quiet kids just made everything unbelievable.

How about this... I will just start this post as if no time has passed since the last post.  In typical guy fashion, I'm going to ignore all feelings and emotions .  And if I get hit (which I probably will) then I will just get hit.  But be warned I will attempt to move out of the way and I have the reflexes of a cheetah. (Albeit a quite elderly cheetah with a limp and a retinal disorder.  So I might not even see it coming or be able to get out of the way if I do!)

The other day I was driving to one of the other locations for my job.  I do this all of the time.  (I'm sure it's not as much as they'd like but the point is this happens (best case) a few times a month.)  When I go I take the company vehicle.  It is a very manly white minivan with our logo on the side of it.  The vehicle is no frills.  And by no frills I mean NO frills.  There isn't power anything.  No remote anything.  I'm lucky the radio works.  I use the term "lucky" loosely because there's where the story starts.

I'm driving to my other location and listening to the radio.  I switch the station a few times just in time to catch the very beginning of a song I like.  And you know that's really hard to do.  Most of the time while scanning the stations you'll find the song you like either at the very end or at least at the point past your favorite part.  But this time I found the song at the beginning.  So I can start singing right away without being just a little bit upset about what all I've missed.  I even gave myself a mental high five. (In today's society, you have to take your victories when you can get them!)

I'm just singing away!  I'm also singing rather loudly because I'm the only one in the car.  When we are alone we always sing like we could win American Idol even though 99.999% of us would really only be a highlight in the bad (but really funny) auditions in the first few weeks.  So, I'm blasting out the song in true week 1 - 3 American Idol fashion when I get to a red light.  As I'm pulling up to the light I notice the car at the light is the same make and model of minivan that I'm driving... only green.  And normally at this point I would stop singing.  I don't mind singing crazy when I'm alone but at a red light there's an audience.  I'm not quite ready for Carnegie just yet.

But THIS time I didn't stop singing.  I don't know if it was the minivan kinship I had formulated in my mind within the last 2 second or if it was the fact that I saw the guy in the minivan singing as well.  Really, it was probably because the song was at the chorus and I didn't want to miss singing my favorite part.  This would prove to be one of the most awkward moments in my car driving history.

When I pull up next to the guy at the light I look over at him.  Again, this is something I don't normally do but I did THIS time.  When I look over at him, he looks back at me.  That's when we notice we are singing the SAME song.  I know most of you are thinking that there is nothing really awkward about that.  We were listening to the same radio station at the same time.  But here's the part that made this little scene awkward...  We were singing the chorus to the song "Kiss Me" by Sixpence None the Richer.  If you don't know it, here it is...

Just as I was striking up the band and making the fireflies dance and the silver moon was sparkling... we looked at each other and said, "So kiss me." (Listen to the song and you will understand.) Now, I don't know the exact moment the musical magnetism began to force our heads to face the objects of our horrible singing but we were definitely looking each other in the eyes when he asked me to kiss him as I did the same to him.

We were both completely shocked!  The light stayed red for what seemed like 2 eternities.  So we had to sit there next to each other and think about the moment.  I never looked back at him but I'm pretty sure we both stopped singing and were focused straight ahead.  When the light turned green, I was a gentleman and let him go first.  I figured if I drive slowly we wouldn't have to revisit the awkward moment again.  But I was wrong.  For the rest of the trip we got caught by EVERY red light!  So that funny feeling kept happening over and over again as I was pulling up next to him.

I really felt like I lost my MAN card that day but I'm not sure at which point.  And I'm fairly sure I haven't done enough "manly" things since then to get it back.  I guess I'm going to stop writing now so I can go watch some Pretty in Pink or Rent or Xanadu with my wife for a little while.  Both Clint Eastwood AND Chuck Norris would be proud!

Oh, and BTW... I'm sorry for waiting so long to write. :)