I’ve been known on occasion to call someone by their name when I’m introducing myself. Like, “Hi, my name is Mike.” And I proceed with, “Nice to meet you, I’m Mike.” No, my name isn’t Mike. What the f*ck is wrong with me? I consistently do that with strangers, especially if they’re a handsome guy. I get all tongue twisted and don’t know what to say, so I naturally make the situation even more awkward than it has to be.
Then, I try to bounce back from this situation and realize I can’t back out of it. So, I immediately shut down and excuse myself form the conversation to find a corner and cry. Oh, corners are the best place to hide after a situation goes awry, too. You can usually find me in a corner awkwardly looking to the wall and hoping that I can teleport myself out of the building.
We’ve all been there, right? I can’t be the only one that’s been in an awkward situation with a stranger. Public restrooms seem to be the number one place for awkward encounters. Especially if the restroom stalls have that little space in between the stalls. You can never not look someone in the eye while sitting on the toilet while they walk by. The person on the other side of the stall door is equally embarrassed, guaranteed.
These 23 strangers encountered awkward situations with strangers:
1.
I went to the bathroom on my office building’s floor, and proceeded to push open a stall door. Turns out, the guy taking a sh*t there had forgotten to lock the door. We both just kind of froze, terrified and shocked, and made eye contact for a split second. I nope’d the f*ck out of there and went to the floor below’s bathroom.
2.
Without thinking, I once tried to shake an amputee’s hand. He stuck out his arm in a non-offended way to show that he was unable to shake my hand, and to diffuse the situation with only minimal amounts of awkwardness. I, for some reason, took this as a gesture to shake his handless arm (it was cut off at just above the elbow so I had to really reach for it) which resulted in uneasy laughs and goodbyes.
3.
I was riding my motorcycle when the light ahead of me turned red. So I slowed down and stopped behind the car that was also waiting at the red light. A guy in sweatpants jogs out between me and the car, and for some reason, a TV remote flies out of his pocket and smashes like it was made of glass, all over the street. The sheer randomness of a guy having a TV remote in his pocket made me burst out laughing. I’m laughing so hard that I ease of my clutch a bit, and scare myself by moving forward an inch, causing me to stall my motorcycle out. I can’t stop laughing, and now my motorcycle engine isn’t covering the sound. So the guy slowly looks up from the shattered remote and stares directly at me with this pained look on his face. He does this until I stop laughing, fired my bike back up, and drove around him and down the street.
4.
On the first day of the semester I was walking on campus, and one of my hands kind of swung into this stranger’s penis, cupping it for a second. We made eye contact and then quickly walked away from each other. When I get to class, I find out he is my TA. I never went in for extra help. EVER.
Irvi Torremoro is an Austinite by way of Las Vegas. She's worked in various outlets in food & beverage and is now focused on writing, eating all the things, talking about Beyonce, and petting all the puppies. She runs flavorandbounty.com, a lifestyle blog about people in the service industry.
