Dear Me...

We've all experienced social awkwardness at some point in our lives. Either you've been stuck talking to somebody you didn't want to or somebody was stuck talking to you. Sucks, don't it?

So, Uh, I Have to Stop Speaking With You and Walk Over There for Reasons Which Will be Revealed Later

Kim Bosch:

Some of my lines for getting out of conversations...

I say "do you smell smoke?" when they reply "No" I shrug and moving away slowly say, "It's your funeral..."

I say, "Excuse me, my friend just walked in the door" (implying that they are not my friend)

I say, "I'm gonna go take up smoking" and head for the door

E say, "Ever mix jello shooters with wine?" and make dizzing motion with hand. Get up VERY quickly and head for the bathroom.

Pretend I don't speak English. (Works well with chatty cab-drivers)

I say, "I gotta go call my kid(s)..." (Works VERY well on guys trying to pick me up, ESPECIALLY in the plural)

When the person who I used the "Do you smell smoke" line comes back I say, "...I thought I told you about the smoke? ya know, you can't laugh in the face of fire because it HAS no face..." walk backwards pointing at them.

A T:

In the mail room at college, ran into a girl that I found out during class liked Star Trek, said I liked it too, then I found I had nothing else to say to her.

I think it went something like: "I gotta go, I came here to buy stamps."

Brett Towns:

I am ashamed to say that I once used the rudest excuse possible to extract myself from a conversation. Namely: no excuse at all. I was at a party where I only knew a few people, so I was drinking a little more than I probably should have. Eventually I found myself talking to a woman I hadn't met before about travel experiences. The conversation started ok, but breathed it's last within a couple of minutes. However the woman hadn't realized this and was trying to keep it on life support. I nodded, smiled and bobbed my head for as long as I could stand, then, in my somewhat inebriated state of poor judgment, simply turned and walked away. I actually left her in mid-sentence. It wasn't until about 10 or 15 minutes later that I realized exactly what I had done and how rude it was. I looked around for her, but then... there really is no way to apologize for something like that is there?

Katy Pieters:

How about, "Well, I better go check on my friend(s)." (C'mon...does your adult friend need hand holding? Afraid he or she is stuck on the toilet and may need you to wipe?)

or...

"Well, I'm gonna go mingle...." (What's missing from the rest of that sentence is "because you're incredibly boring and I'm uncomfortable in your presence and, well, I just don't want to be here with you, so maybe I can strike up a conversation with someone else who I won't want to slither away from.")

But I can't relate. This has never happened to me. No--I'm not bitter. Much.

Steve Gozdecki:

A few years back after a bad breakup I was doing some mad furious blind dating via an ad I placed in the Chicago Reader.

My ad drew a response from this one woman who didn’t want to talk on the phone — instead, she’d send me long emails. (She was also addicted to text-messaging on her mobile phone.) She told me she was “between jobs” after the dot.com boom but working a bit at a clothing boutique in Wicker Park when she wasn’t mastering Simpsons trivia. In short, my kind of gal.

So we did a meet-up at a mutually agreed-upon casual bar and grill early on a Saturday eve, and she showed up dressed for a long, hard night at (trashy goth club) Neo — tight sparkly top, skirt and knee-high boots. And somewhere under that makeup, she may have had a face.

It seemed obvious from the start that we probably weren’t going to click, especially since she disappeared twice within the span of a half hour with her phone — rampant texting to do, I guess. After finishing her drink, she hit me with “Well, I have to work tomorrow, so I’m gonna hit the road now.” At 8 pm. On a Saturday night. For a job at one of those little stores that opens at noon on Sundays. When she’s dressed for a night out doing blow and dancing to Nitzer Ebb.

Anyway, that definitely ended the conversation for us, and I sure didn’t try to restart it at a later date.

Eric Wrisley:

When I was about 4 and my brother was about 5, we had a babysitter who told us to wait in the car, because she needed to talk to the police about her little brother finding a pin in a Halloween candy bar.

My brother and I waited in the parking lot for what felt like forEVER. This was in the 70s when it was considered ok to leave kids in a parking lot, I guess.

I was probably 14 when I thought back to that day and realized that B-I-N-G-O doesn't spell police.

Stanley Gilbert:

A very nice person asked me recently why I'm stand-offish around people I've just met. One marvels at the very question, even from someone so very tolerant. Having spent an as yet un-estimated number of (years?) in the death's head grin of polite conversation with people who sap the very marrow from my joie de vivre, I can only assume that this cannot be a unique posture.

Nonetheless, feeling a little sheepish about my social skills by this question I decided to do a little self-analysis and discovered that I had what we will call an EE Index. It seems that the very instant I am introduced to anyone my Bolt Radar System begins to evaluate at what level this individual will be Entertaining or Enlightening to me, and thus my physical reaction. There simply isn't any other valid assessment. Anything else would be a form of elitism, or golddigging.

So, how then does one arrive at an EE rating? Simply by using the DOYL Scale. Well primed Bolt Radars can detect instantly what position on the Drain On Your Life Scale a new acquaintance will fall.

At the extremes of the scale we have the SS Points. People with the very lowest DOYL scores are, quite plainly, Super Stars. People who have an irreducable power over your desire to be near and dear to them. You seek them out, short of stalking, which of course is a measure of your own DOYL level by them.

At the other end of the scale is also an SS Point. People who score the very highest on the DOYL Scale are at once, and perhaps should be, on the ear maybe, tagged, forever, Soul Suckers. Lord help them, and apparently (S)He does because many of them get married, have children and lead happy, fruitful lives in front of the wake of grinding boredom they leave behind.

I decided ultimately that there really isn't any way to mitigate the sound of my own hubris in this matter, even now that it has a solid scientific basis, other than to remind you glad-hands, hail-fellows and Pollyannas everywhere that life is temporary, and fleeting, and filled with all manner of objectionable situations that are inescapable. Don't get trapped. And don't try to deny it. It's part of your own nature. Run, run for your life!