We’ve all been there. “Awkward turtle” moments happen to the best of us. While some people might be gifted with the innate ability to escape them quickly, most of us aren’t. Luckily for you collegiettes™, everything I do is awkward, so (for better or worse) I have plenty of experience trying to gracefully handle sticky situations. With this go-to guide for surviving life’s awkward, tough-call situations relatively unscathed, hopefully you won’t identify with so many @TheAwkwardTweet scenarios in the future!
Photo courtesy of The Wonderful World of Wengie
You’re stuck in a painfully boring conversation with someone at a party.
Sometimes this happens: you’re at a friend’s party, mingling, drinking, having a good time, and you get sucked into a conversation with someone who either doesn’t know how to converse well or can’t stop talking. At a party, it’s fine to excuse yourself politely and say you have to go make a phone call, use the bathroom, help the host or hostess with something or get a drink. Just make sure you actually follow up with that excuse, or it’ll be obvious that you were only trying to get away from whomever you were talking to. If that person finds you again, you can also introduce him or her to someone else, and then run for it. Cheap shot? Maybe. But at any rate, he or she won’t be your problem anymore.
You’re on the worst, most uncomfortable first date ever.
First dates can be rough; you’re already worried about how you look, how to act, where you’re going and what to say without worrying about whether or not you and your date will actually have a good time. What happens if this turns out to be the worst first date ever? Sometimes people just aren’t compatible.
If you really can’t wait for the evening to end, wait until your date goes to the bathroom at dinner (or to the concession stand at the movies, etc.) and call your roommate or friend who can provide you with an excuse to leave. The key to this move is making sure you don’t seem too obvious. Ask your friend to call you back in 20 minutes. Don’t have her call back as soon as your date comes back from the bathroom, or it’ll raise a red flag. When she does call back in 20 minutes, tell your date you have to go pick her up because she’s at a party and her designated driver fell through. This is more plausible than any kind of sudden “emergency” that you might have to attend to.
What happens if your date doesn’t go to the bathroom during dinner? Then I got nothing other than it might make for a good story. Sorry!
You accidentally say something offensive.
Like I said, I’m a painfully awkward person. I’m only slightly exaggerating when I say awkward moments are my life. Even when I’m not the one who causes the awkward situation, I seem to attract them like a moth to a flame. Not only has this happened to me once, I’ve witnessed this happen to multiple people.
The solution? Unfortunately, if you have accidentally said something offensive to someone (especially if it’s someone you just met), there’s not a lot you can do except bite your tongue and apologize. Hopefully, the person you offended will accept your apology and you can both agree to change the subject. If he or she doesn’t accept your apology or won’t move on from the subject, talk about it. Try to listen and understand where that person is coming from, even if you disagree. You might not be able to salvage a friendship, but you will hopefully be able to salvage the conversation or evening.
The unwanted conversation
I fall into these traps all the time. Unwanted conversations are similar to the boring conversations at parties, but they usually take place on a plane or a bus or in some other small confined space where you can’t just get up and walk away. Also, they normally begin right as you’re about to settle down for some solo time on said plane or bus with a book, iPod or for a nap.
Actually, I have no idea how to extricate myself from these situations. I once got stuck talking to an elderly woman on a bus for six hours about the differences between the Argentine and American police forces because I couldn’t figure out a polite way to tell her I wasn’t interested.
The solution: You tell me. Share your advice in the comments section below!
Offering your condolences
This is a tough situation to be in – a friend or a significant other loses a mother, father, sibling or any other loved one. You want to let your friend know that you’re there for him or her without seeming insincere.
The best advice I’ve got for you is to just be honest. Tell your friend, “I’m here if you need me,” but only if you intend to follow through on that promise. If not, a simple, “I’m sorry for your loss” will suffice.
Remember, your friend is going to hear all kinds of things from people for weeks, including well-intentioned wishers who say things like, “At least s/he lived a good life,” or “s/he is in a better place now.” Avoid those overused phrases; they won’t make your friend feel any better, and she’ll know they’re completely contrived.
The “How are you?” trap
This is another situation I find myself in more than I’d like to. I’m running late to class, I’ve got my binder in one hand, my Starbucks in the other, and I might just be able to slip in the back of the room unnoticed if I hurry. And then it happens: I see someone I know, I wave jauntily and say, “How are you?” And…she wants to talk! Not only does she want to talk, she wants to explain every detail of her life story to me right now.
Fortunately, this situation isn’t too hard to end. Simply tell your friend that you’d love to chat, but you’re on your way to class (or work, or wherever it is you might really be going). Then ask her if you can finish the conversation later. If she says yes, do it — really follow up with a phone call or an e-mail and ask her if she’d like to talk. Maybe she’s feeling uber-stressed about something. Or maybe something good has happened to her. Who knows? Either way, when you do have the time, call her up, suggest that you meet for lunch, drinks or coffee, and let her tell you the story.
Awkward silences
Now there is a difference between three friends sitting around a table not talking. That can be a comfortable silence, and those don’t have to be awkward.
I’m talking about the kind of awkward silences that often occur when you’re around people you don’t know at dinner or drinks, and the conversation has sort of petered out, and no one’s said anything for 10 seconds or more. You don’t know if you should say anything or just keep sitting there awkwardly. What then? What do you do?
There are a couple of different ways you can handle this. You can excuse yourself to go to the bathroom, even if you don’t have to go. Hopefully, this will give you time to think of a new topic to bring up when you return. Maybe by the time you get back, someone else will have started a new conversation.
You can also pretend to text. C’mon, you knew it was coming! The only risk with pretending to text is that someone will catch you, and then you’ll look like a fool. But hey, if things are really that awkward, it’s worth the risk, right?
Lastly, you can do what my roommate does: When he’s stuck somewhere really awkwardly, especially around people he doesn’t know, he’ll sidle up to the person nearest to him and be like, “What do you think about dogs that wear sweaters in the winter?” Normally, it’s just weird enough that it breaks the ice. People start laughing, my roommate will introduce himself to them, and after that, no one feels uncomfortable about talking anymore.
Of course, you always do run the risk of offending someone (which my roommate has done a couple of times), and if that happens, you might want to refer to No. 3 above about how to recover.
Well, there you have it! Of course this isn’t an exhaustive list of awkward situations, but they’re all instances that have literally happened to me at least once in the past six weeks. So, I hope you find them helpful, and as always, we love hearing from our readers! If you have an awkward-turtle situation that you don’t see on this list, feel free to write in and let us know what happened and how you handled it!