Just as turtles have roamed the world for millllllllions of years, awkwardness has plagued mankind since the beginning. Awkwardness knows no limits. It is prevalent among babies, children, tweens, teens, adults, and the elderly. Sure some ages demonstrate EXTREME levels of awkwardness, but it is nonetheless a force to fight at all ages.
Le Awkward Time Machine will let us delve into the past, and rediscover all those moments that are pregnant with awkwardness. Our first trip is to 1991. Hold on to your keyboards! WE ARE GOING IN!
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Experiencing 17 years of jet lag, you find yourself at the Shaws supermarket in a typical suburb. You are salivating at the sight of chocolate chip cookies, whoopie pies, and chocolate frosted cakes with rainbow jimmies on top when you suddenly spot a woman in her mid 30s pushing a shopping cart with her little 3 year old (that’s me!) riding in the main basket because the children’s seat is for sissies. You decide to follow them because you see a box of Cheez-Its and decide you are craving something salty and delicious. You find the little child adorable, ridiculous, and humorous and develop a strong liking for her, so you continue to tag along all the way to the check out. The cashier is scanning the items at a rapid pace. Milk, Cheez-Its (damn you want those so bad), toilet paper, soap, Fruit Roll Ups, Dunkaroos, frozen pizza, Fig Newtons, Honey Bunches of Oats, tooth paste, so on and so forth. Right as the cashier goes to grab the box of Tampax, the 3 year old pipes up and says knowingly,
“Those help my mommy go pee pee.”
The cashier awkwardly looks at the little girl, then at the mother. They try to diffuse the situation by uncomfortably laughing, but it is too late. The damage has been done, especially because the cashier is a pimply teenage boy. The cashier speeds up the pace of the check-out process, practically throwing the items down the conveyer belt, and grunts out the total price. The mother quickly pays and shuttles her $200 worth of groceries and her child out of the store, thinking how this experience will be remembered for decades. Awkward experiences sure do survive the tests of time.
