Adventures in Awkwardland, Episode 12: Nudity Never Hurts... or does it?

This story was emailed to me by an anonymous reader. Enjoy!

During her freshman year of college, "Kate" was pursued by a boy she didn’t know. After ignoring his suit for several weeks, she was eventually coerced into going on a date with him. She was encouraged by her (male) best friend, who at the time thought this boy was cool, to accept consecutive offers from him. One night Kate allowed him to kiss her and afterwards promptly decided it wasn't meant to be.

A few weeks later Kate and her (male) best friend ended up hooking up at a party. They figured out they'd had subconscious crushes on one another for a while, and decided to date each other. Now, all this would have been fine if it hadn’t been for Kate's roommate. She’d developed a little crush on the first boy, and kept inviting him over to watch movies with “them." Kate and her now-boyfriend were hanging out on her (bunk) bed; he wasn’t naked but she wasn’t wearing a shirt (in her defense, there was no air conditioning). They were, of course, alone in the room. Kate's roommate walks in, they chat briefly (nudity is considered acceptable in their relationship), and she doesn’t notice Kate's boyfriend or, apparently, the fact that she was naked to the waist.

Suddenly, they hear a knock on the door. Being the owner of the lower bunk, Kate's roommate got off her bed and opened the door. It was the first boy and his best friend! They’d come over to visit them…and now this boy, whom Kate never meant to hurt, (and his best friend) had seen her topless in bed with her new boyfriend!!

Well, the next night Kate and her boyfriend went to another party, and lo and behold, who’s making out in front of them? That boy and Kate's roommate.

Rejections are always awkward, but in the end, it seems that things worked out for the best. The injured party in this story was able to move on, however I can imagine many more awkward moments awaiting these couples in the coming semesters.

Got an Awkward Adventure to share? Send them to: MyAwkwardAdventure@gmail.com
New posts appear somewhere between Monday and Tuesday, so check back for your submissions!

Adventures in Awkwardland, Episode 11: Fat Kyle

At some point or another in your lifetime, you will experience a houseguest like Fat Kyle. In my head, Fat Kyle is the equivalent of an anti-social Cartman.

Fat Kyle hails from the mysterious land of Wisconsin, home to cheese heads, the Green Bay Packers, and not much else. Since he lacks anything better to do, Kyle is a video gamer.

Scott first met Kyle when they were in 8th grade playing Diablo II. I've never played the Diablo series, but UrbanDictionary defines it as "An online game which is so addictive it takes a lot away from the player by ruining their lives and if they ever try to leave it they find that the company deleted their account which causes them to start all over again like a never ending cycle of being trapped in it: also see Final Fantasy XI."

Years later, after they had all graduated from High School and tried life in the real world, Scott decided to give up both Diablo II and his FFXI game to Fat Kyle. Kyle was 22 years old, Scott was 21. Seems like a simple exchange of passwords to me, but what do I know about these things. Apparently, in order to trade accounts, you need to have the whole thing notarized by an official notary due to some EULA (End-User License Agreement) law and whatnot. All that fine print that we click "yes, I read this, continue" after reading "Important, read all." The things we never really think about. I tried reading about this EULA thing to give you more of a scope of how serious it actually is, but my eyes glazed over. Suffice it to say, they needed a notary to make it officially legal.

Anyway, Fat Kyle decides to come visit Scott and his girlfriend. He told them to "have some activities planned" and expected to spend a full week with them at their apartment. The two of them aren't used to company interested in actually doing stuff, so they plan to tour the major attractions of the mid-PA area. I assume Hershey Park, mini golf, and a zoo were involved, considering they're about all our area has to offer at the moment.

Fat Kyle wasn't an ungraceous guest. He brought Scott and his girlfriend each a cheese hat from the wildes of Wisconsin. What he was, however, was an unmotivated gaming nerd. For each activity Scott suggested, Fat Kyle said "no." He was hard to remove from their couch and wanted to sit there all day and play video games with Scott. In fact, he seemed very standoffish towards Scott's girlfriend and resented her interruptions throughout the day.

Since Scott and his girlfriend couldn't get Fat Kyle out of the house, they decided to bring some amusement to him. They planned a party that weekend, and a few of their close friends were invited. It seemed like a great idea to introduce Kyle to some of Scott's friends that they had almost certainly talked about during their years of gaming together. Since Kyle didn't seem particularly interested in anything, they decided not to mention it until the last possible moment. When people started arriving, Kyle seemed out of his element. Within an hour, he was outside on the porch crying.

"It's my party and I'll cry if I want to" doesn't apply when you're three quarters of the way across the country at another person's house at a party filled with their friends.

Fat Kyle ended up leaving Scott's apartment early, cutting his visit in half. He spent an extra hundred dollars or so changing his flight plans. To this day, we're pretty sure the only reason he came down was to transfer the Final Fantasy XI account.

Update: After Fat Kyle left, he constantly spam texted Scott's girlfriend, calling her nasty names and relentlessly berating her for no reason. She eventually got his number blocked by her service provider. Very mature for a 22 year old man, wouldn't you say? Now, if you ask me, a man who travels across the country to visit another man, play video games side by side, and trash-talk the girlfriend in this situation sounds very suspicious. I'd hazard a guess and say... "FAT KYLE LOVES SCOTT." But that wouldn't be very mature of me. I'll let you say it instead.

Got an Awkward Adventure to share? Send them to: MyAwkwardAdventure@gmail.com
New posts appear somewhere between Monday and Tuesday, so check back for your submissions!

Cookies by Douglas Adams (author: "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy")

[Note from Sham: I came across this story many years ago while reading the Salmon of Doubt. This is a prime example of the foundation that Awkwardland was built on, where you cringe halfway through a sentence because of the building tension. In a few years, hopefully all our stories will flow like this one.]

This actually did happen to a real person, and the real person was me. I had gone to catch a train. This was April 1976, in Cambridge, U.K. I was a bit early for the train. I'd gotten the time of the train wrong.

I went to get myself a newspaper to do the crossword, and a cup of coffee and a packet of cookies. I went and sat at a table.

I want you to picture the scene. It's very important that you get this very clear in your mind.

Here's the table, newspaper, cup of coffee, packet of cookies. There's a guy sitting opposite me, perfectly ordinary-looking guy wearing a business suit, carrying a briefcase.

It didn't look like he was going to do anything weird. What he did was this: he suddenly leaned across, picked up the packet of cookies, tore it open, took one out, and ate it.

Now this, I have to say, is the sort of thing the British are very bad at dealing with. There's nothing in our background, upbringing, or education that teaches you how to deal with someone who in broad daylight has just stolen your cookies.

You know what would happen if this had been South Central Los Angeles. There would have very quickly been gunfire, helicopters coming in, CNN, you know. . . But in the end, I did what any red-blooded Englishman would do: I ignored it. And I stared at the newspaper, took a sip of coffee, tried to do a clue in the newspaper, couldn't do anything, and thought, what am I going to do?

In the end I thought, nothing for it, I'll just have to go for it, and I tried very hard not to notice the fact that the packet was already mysteriously opened. I took out a cookie for myself. I thought, that settled him. But it hadn't because a moment or two later he did it again. He took another cookie.

Having not mentioned it the first time, it was somehow even harder to raise the subject the second time around. "Excuse me, I couldn't help but notice . . ." I mean, it doesn't really work.

We went through the whole packet like this. When I say the whole packet, I mean there were only about eight cookies, but it felt like a lifetime. He took one, I took one, he took one, I took one. Finally, when we got to the end, he stood up and walked away.

Well, we exchanged meaningful looks, then he walked away, and I breathed a sigh of relief and sat back. A moment or two later the train was coming in, so I tossed back the rest of my coffee, stood up, picked up the newspaper, and underneath the newspaper were my cookies.

The thing I like particularly about this story is the sensation that somewhere in England there has been wandering around for the last quarter-century a perfectly ordinary guy who's had the same exact story, only he doesn't have the punch line.

[Excerpted from "The Salmon of Doubt: Hitchhiking the Galaxy One Last Time" by Douglas Adams]

Adventures in Awkwardland, Episode 10: AWESOMELAND

So I just got a job interview with a great company and am in the mood for something funny. This is the most awesome story I have ever been told.

When I worked at the bookstore, there was a girl working in the cafe named Emily. She's short, small, and a fiery ball of German/Irish attitude. She told me this story when I had just started working there and I have never heard anything half so awesome in my life.

Emily had plans one weekend to go hiking with a boy named Mike. She and Mike were best friends and made plans like this pretty often, no questions asked. The area down by Tucquan Glenn is infamous for being secluded from civilization with spotty cell phone reception. Emily was going to be dropped off by her father, and the two were to meet at the park entrance around midday, enjoy a few hours of hiking around, and drive back to the city together. But even the best laid plans always go awry.

Emily waited for hours before giving up on Mike. She refused to waste the opportunity and started her hike alone. Before long, darkness fell, and rainclouds moved in. Emily needed to find shelter or she would be stuck in the thunderstorm with no protection. Luckily, not far off the trail, there was a cave overlooking a small pond. She settled in for the night and prepared for the worst.

Within 10 minutes, Emily went primal.

She stripped naked, ran screaming into the rain, cannonballed into the pond, painted war paint on her face and body, and built a fire using sticks and dried leaves from the inside of the cave. Emily had also brought a backpack of supplies, including her art gear and a sketchbook. She even brought out her charcoal and pastels to draw cave paintings.

The next morning, Emily made her way back down the mountain. She passed a few other hikers on the trail but they seemed to give her a wide birth, probably on account of the twigs still stuck in her hair from her cave woman experience. She still needed to find a telephone to call her dad and find a ride home.

Emily walked about two miles up the road until she came to a house with a telephone cable running towards it. It was a pretty run down shack, one of those last resort houses like the one from Night of the Living Dead. She knocked on the front door and the woman who answered had disheveled hair and a hint of a black eye. She agreed to lend Emily her phone, and when she turned away from the door Emily noticed the man sitting on the couch. Stark naked. Cleaning his gun.

20 minutes later, Emily ran as fast as she could toward her dad's car and high tailed it out of her nightmare. The news gets even better: Mike forgot completely about their plans to go hiking because he was HOOKING UP WITH HER ROOMMATE. What a jerk.

She got him back, though.

A few months later, Emily was invited out to a bar in the city for drinks with some old friends. Mike and her roommate were busy and she didn't have a car so she stole Mike's keys and borrowed his Vespa. Three hours and 8 kamikaze shots later, she was on her way back home. Emily was wearing her old German war helmet with the single spike on top while screaming in German and driving a stolen Vespa through the back alleys of Lancaster.

She actually has no memory of reaching home, but the next morning Mike was pretty confused when he walked outside to find his Vespa chained to a tree instead of in the garage, the spike from the helmet embedded in the tree (as though she headbutted it), and his keys hidden in a flower pot by the front door.

Like I said. Awesomeland.

Don't forget to send your awkward stories to: MyAwkwardAdventure@gmail.com

New posts appear somewhere between Monday and Tuesday, so check back for your submissions!

Adventures in Awkwardland, Episode 9: Reader Submission!

This submission was sent to me by Claudia, an awkward relationship pre-Trudy.

Every once in a while, we choose to date someone who is horrible for our mental and physical health. For instance, when I'm in a relationship, I tend to gain weight because a) I don't watch what I eat closely enough while on a date and b) we usually dine out a lot. Part of the whole "wooing" process, apparently.

Claudia's ex-girlfriend singlehandedly proved that sometimes there is an alternate reason for the weight gain.

Remember how movies and television try to push the idea that sharing food is romantic? Spaghetti, wedding cake, chocolate covered strawberries, and so on. Sharing is a cute gesture that you care about the other person and want them to enjoy the same foodie experiences. For Claudia's ex, we'll call her Sarah, sharing was an unknown concept. In fact, she not only ate all of her own food, she ate most of Claudia's food as well.

The scenario plays like this: The two girls are sitting at a nice restaurant. Claudia orders a sandwich and fries and Sarah orders steak, mashed potatoes, soup, bread sticks, and a side salad. Seems like enough food to feed a short teenage girl, right? Wrong. Claudia is only three bites into her grilled cheese and tomato sammich before Miss Sarah the Snorlax reaches across the table and steals a fry. One fry, we'll let it slide. Then a second, still excusable. But when half of her fries go missing, Claudia starts to get concerned. Her reaction: "Hey, can I eat my food?" and Sarah responds "GIMMEE, NOM NOM NOM." Wash, rinse, repeat, every meal together for six months. You can imagine how quickly the popcorn disappeared during their trips to the cinema.

In Claudia's own words, "The first time I saw so'n'so naked, I thought she was okayish, and then 6 months down the road, I was like, 'Shit, she's fat. Wtf happened? Oh, right. She ate my fries. That's what happened.'" Sarah gained 40 pounds during this relationship while Claudia lost weight due to all her food being stolen from her plate.

Since girls like closure, Claudia told Sarah precisely why their relationship ended and why they suddenly had to buy all new wardrobes to fit their new body types. Apparently Sarah's new girlfriend took offence to this list and wrote some threatening messages to Claudia. Via MySpace. Instead of the big badass lesbian image she was trying to front, the new girl's messages seemed more like a chihuahua taking on a bulldozer. She's lucky Claudia didn't print them out, hand them to the Police to get a restraining order and a shock collar.

I guess Sarah hadn't starved the fight out of that one yet.

Don't forget to send your awkward stories to: MyAwkwardAdventure@gmail.com

New posts appear somewhere between Monday and Tuesday, so check back for your submissions!

News Update!!!

Hey everyone!!

Have you ever read an adventure and thought "Gee, my life is just as awkward" but were too shy to post your experience in a comment? Well here's your chance!!

We now have an email address that you can submit your personal stories to! Each story will be read and those deemed awkward or downright uncomfortable enough will be posted! Feel free to change names of people or places to remain fully anonymous.

Submit your own stories here: MyAwkwardAdventure@gmail.com

Adventures in Awkwardland is updated every Monday night/Tuesday morning, but the more stories I receive, the more often I will post!! I look forward to your suggestions!