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really long silence
In high school my brother dated this girl for a very short time. He invited her to spend Thanksgiving dinner with our family. Everything was late, and so we ended up eating at like 6PM instead of lunch time. This had some of us feeling a little awkward. Then the new girlfriend came in with […]
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three horrible thanksgiving memories
When I think of Thanksgiving, I’m surprised that I still like to get together with people after some real awkward times. The “holiday season” should be filled with “holiday cheer”, but a number of times it wasn’t for me. One time I was with my family for Thanksgiving. It hadn’t happened very often because I many times have had to travel the longest distance of my family to get together with them. This time one of our youngest had just received horrible news from someone at school: Santa Claus didn’t exist. The child cried and cried. Many of my family said that this other person was lying, was stupid, and were convincing her that Santa does exist. That was the Thanksgiving mood at the time I arrived. Just before we served the meal, I was confronted with the question. “So, do you think that person was right in saying that Santa doesn’t exist?” I asked back, “Well, does he exist or not? Is it better to say the truth about him or not?” “What?! You’d allow someone to say something to destroy someone’s Christmas?! You’d allow someone to totally tear down a child’s hopes and dreams? You know how much she cried? You know how close we came to having her Christmas totally ruined?” Oops. One person was so upset and angry that it upset and angered another. And because this second family member was upset and angry, it ticked off another, and then another. That’s right – it was a huge family domino effect. So, I got to sit down to a Thanksgiving meal with just about everyone mad at me. Somehow the food just didn’t taste all that great that night. There was a time at Thanksgiving that I couldn’t be with my family. An elderly lady felt sorry for me and said I could travel to her place and share the Thanksgiving meal and time with her family. Unfortunately, she didn’t share with me about how her daughter felt, who was totally against my being there. It seemed to be okay when I got there. I had a nice, peaceful chat with my friend. We went to church later on that evening. There I got to see her daughter, who ignored me when I saw her. I was surprised by that. After my friend and I got back to her house, her daughter didn’t say hello to me, but was visibly upset. “Why are you here? Why did you even come here? Don’t you know that Thanksgiving is extremely private, and that NOBODY outside of my family IS ALLOWED? Why did my mom invite you here when she knew that? I think you manipulated her. Don’t you have your own family to go to?” To keep the family peace, my friend dropped me off at the local Salvation Army that Thanksgiving Day to have turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes and everything else with the homeless people in that area. Even though I felt humiliated, the people’s stories there were worse than mine. I actually had something to be thankful for. Of course I left town that next day – quickly. One Thanksgiving break I was looking forward to seeing a girl with whom I had a “long-distance” relationship. That summer before we had started our relationship, but my work and her work were in two cities that were far apart. However, we were looking forward to this week-long break to see each other again. One thing that she mentioned to me just a couple of days before I was to go see her was that she was also inviting her ex-boyfriend over to stay at her place for that time. “What? Why on earth would you want to do that?” I was caught off-guard. But she insisted. I protested. “Please come up. I really want to see you.” “Okay, okay. But why still invite him?” “He’s still my friend. We saw each other a couple of times, and we’re doing alright.” “What does that mean?” “We’re kind of seeing each other.” Right then I was ready to call off everything. She insisted again. “No! No! Please come up! It’s been so long since I’ve seen you. I really want you to come here. Please. I don’t know that I want to see him anymore. Let’s get back together.” I hesitated. “Oh, all right.” “But please, when you come up here, don’t tell him anything I’ve told you here.” When it comes to romance and relationships, sometimes we guys act like bulls chasing a matador’s cape. All we see is red. I should’ve had a clue. But I ignored every red flashing alarm in me telling me not to go. I went. On the trip to see her, my car started to break down. I barely made it to her folks’ place. So, I felt trapped there while my car was taken to the local mechanic. The next day I saw her – holding hands with her ex! She saw me and gave me a hug, and introduced me to her “ex”. You know the feeling when your stomach drops to your knees, all you feel like doing is throwing up, and in that moment you use all of your strength to just to appear normal? It took all of me to manage a smile, shake his hand and say “Hi.” After I shook off the shock, the whole family sat down to eat. Unbelievably, almost miraculously, I acted normally, as if nothing was happening. However, deep down inside, I felt totally like a 5th leg on a chair – totally unnecessary. Here I was – I was far away from home. My car was getting worked on. Any way to continue having a relationship with this girl were gone, and I had to stay in this environment … for the rest of the week. As I thought about it more, I decided that I had to do the unthinkable – tell this “no-longer ex” what was going on. I got a chance to talk with him the next day. He was shocked. Later on the next day, the “stuff” hit the wall – my friend called me. She was mad. After her call, we didn’t talk for the rest of the time I was there until my last day there. Just imagine how empty my Thanksgiving time was. I wish that the trouble I had that Thanksgiving ended there when I left. But it didn’t. I got my car back, although the mechanic said that there was more to work on. I was anxious to get back home. Less than halfway home, my car didn’t want to run anymore. In the middle of a large city where I had no friends or contacts, my car stopped. I had no clue what to do. I don’t know if I felt more alone than at that point. Thank God for friends. I called one for help. He recommended a friend, who let me have my car towed to his place, and took me to the bus station. A month later, another friend came out a long distance to fix my car, and other friends drove me from my home to reunite me with my fixed car and kind friends. But, oh boy! What a memory! too recent to tell – USA
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your dad is in the hospital
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a "special" christmas dinner
Several years ago my family and I had the most awkward Christmas dinner. It was the year that my grandparents decided they would treat us all to a special dinner at one of their favorite restaurants. When we arrived at the restaurant, it was packed. Completely busy, but we weren’t worried. My grandpa had made a very special reservation several days prior to have a private room for the whole family to dine in. Our confidence in the reservation was short lived as we found out the staff had made a mistake and had already given the room to another party. So instead of our nice private room, they put a bunch of tables together and stuck us in the bar. Fabulous. So after an hour or so passes, we get our meals and we’re eating and enjoying our time. Suddenly, an old man, who was sitting in the booth behind us, falls out of his seat onto my brother, passed out. Now, the old man is on the ground, not breathing and his wife is hysterically crying (which also made my cousin cry). My aunt decides this guy needs some sort of help (he was choking) and so she socks him in the stomach! A nurse, who was sitting at the bar, yells at my aunt, runs over, pushes her out of the way and starts doing CPR and the Heilmlich maneuver. Next thing I know, paramedics rush past me, revive the old man, and roll him out on a gurney…all while we’re eating dinner. That was enough drama for Christmas dinner, right? Probably not. As we’re all trying to calm each other down and get back to enjoying dinner, the restaurant keeps getting more and more crowded by the minute. Apparently there was no more room to sit in the waiting area, so this strange old man decides to sit down right next to me on the booth/bench thing I was on. I was totally creeped out..and for a long time none of my family even noticed this old man sitting right next to me at our table. Finally, my grandpa saw the guy and says to him, ” I don’t think you’ve met my granddaughter, her name is Emily.” It was totally awkward. After awhile, the man left and I thought that had to be the end of our crazy night. Nope. There were crowds and crowds of people waiting to eat. What made it worse was that the service was completely slow. My cousin didn’t even get her meal until everyone else was eating dessert. Anywho, as my family was trying to finish up dinner and dessert, an angry old man starts pacing throughout the restaurant, yelling at each table, “YOU EAT AND YOU LEAVE!” We loved that. What a merry Christmas! Emily – CA
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almost lovers
I remember reluctantly going early to help prepare my great-uncle’s house for his 80something birthday last summer. There was this gorgeous girl helping with the food. I figured she was around my age and I wanted to “talk” to her and possibly get her number. My trip might end up not being a total waste, I thought. She was around my aunt a lot and the way they were talking it was like my aunt raised her or something but I was sure she wasn’t her child. Anyways, this girl was really good-looking, no joke, so I finally see her alone and I muster up the courage to go talk to her. And so it went … Me: “Hey” Her: “Hey ” … long awkward pause Me: *I point to my aunt* “Do you know Aunt Flo?” Her: “She’s my aunt” Me: “oh … that’s cool” … another awkward pause … “I guess that makes us cousins” Her: [with a rather sarcastic smile] “Yep” I die a little inside, make up some lame excuse about something I have to do and quickly walk away. I tried my best to not be seen by her the rest of the day. Frank – Earth
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don't jump!
When I was a teenager, I really wanted to jump off the Orford-Fairlee Bridge into the river, but my mother talked me out of it. “It’s too high and you could break your neck,” she said. “Besides, there could be old bridge posts you could land on.” Shortly thereafter, I was just about to take a walk across the bridge when I saw about a dozen young (and handsome) guys standing on the other side of the rail, about to jump. Eager to save their lives, I began running as fast as I could, yelling: “Don’t jump! Don’t jump! You could die!” They politely refrained from jumping until I reached them. Grinning, one of them asked me why he shouldn’t jump. I repeated what my mother had said. Trying valiantly not to laugh, the guys told me they’d already jumped off the bridge several times and it was perfectly safe. A hot blush flooded my face, but I tried to play it cool. “Oh, carry on then,” I said. I was almost out of earshot when they burst into guffaws. The moral of this story is: Don’t listen to your mother. Rachel – NH
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a dumb plan
Oh, haha. This was SO awkward but still funny, I have two sisters and two brothers and our family live really close, always phone each other, chat on-line etc. blah, blah, blah. I’m the only one who doesn’t have kids so *sometimes* when my sisters phone me I’ll just be in my house reading or doing some work or whatever and I have a pretty short attention span, well….SOMETIMES, actually quite often either they or my mum will phone me and get me on the phone and just talk and talk about something that I’d get quite bored with after a while, I’ve never been good at getting out of boring conversations, like I’d just be a ‘Yeah? Really? Wow? No way?’ type person but one day I hit on this amazing idea, I only have a mobile so I decided that if I was in the middle of a conversation I couldn’t pay attention to I would just hang up and pretend the reception went dead, I was so pleased with myself and I started doing this quite often, then one day my sister was talking and I knew I had to go out so I hung up the phone, but I actually didn’t, I only thought I had, she could still hear the radio in the background….so she phones me back two minutes later and she’s like ‘Tanya….’ in this really exasperated voice…..’Will you STOP hanging up on everyone ALL THE TIME!’ I was like ‘What no, no, no my reception just went dead O_O’ …and she’s like ‘No it didn’t! You hang up on us all the time! You’ve been doing it for ages, it’s because you can’t pay attention! Everybody knows and they laugh about it all the time but will you just stop doing it now……!’……I was like..’Uh…oh. Really? ReeeallllY??? Seriously? Noooo. Oh. Hmmmm.’ ……Plan = dumb. :O Tanya – Belfast
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skinny dipping at mom's
My in-laws appear to be very reserved people and quite frankly they intimidate me. When my husband suggested last August that we skinny dip in broad daylight in the river behind his parents’ house, I was horrified. Their driveway winds past one of the bends in the river and I knew they could drive past at any moment. I wasn’t about to let them see my bare backside on our family vacation. However, after my husband stripped down, I finally consented on one condition: we walk upstream to a more secluded area. He agreed and instead of donning his clothes for the hike like I assumed he would, he began strolling along the river bank buck naked with nothing but his river shoes on. I followed him a safe 200 yards behind, hoping I could at least feign ignorance, forgetting I was carrying his clothes under my arm. We were almost safe around the river bend when I heard the sound that echoes terror in my mind to this day: a honking car horn. I whirled around to see my in-laws, who had paused in their driveway to wave at their wayward offspring. I stood there, dumbfounded, holding my husband’s clothes, and could not even bring myself to wave and possibly distract them from seeing their flasher son in the distance. After about a thousand suns rose and set, they drove on, having had their fill. I prayed with all that was in me that my husband had made it around the bend in the creek. To my horror, my husband was still standing there, sun gleaming off his winter white body. He told me his only response to his parents was to wave proudly over his shoulder as his strolled on! To make matters worse, he still wanted to swim. He figured the worst was over, his parents saw him. So he continued up the creek to the “abandoned” foreclosed home next door to skinny dip in the former neighbor’s share of their creek. Not a minute later I see him running full tilt toward me, naked as a jaybird, a look of glee and shock on his face. “There have realtors there! They’re showing the house!” It was one of the most awkward moments of my life facing his parents that night at dinner. Thankfully, they laughed it off. I would have thought we’d be ex-communicated! Next time my husband asks me to skinny dip, I’m waiting for twelve o’clock midnight. Brittany – Somewhere