Awkward Moments

Couldn't think of an original blog post, so decided to share an awkward moment I've had in my life for you to relate or make fun of! See, even authors (especially authors) have cringe-worthy points in their life.

>So when I was in high school I developed a crush on a gymnast girl that went to my same school. We rode the same bus together in the mornings and had one or two classes together (can't remember, high school seemed like a life-time ago). Anyways, prom was coming around and everyone went into this frenzy of trying to figure out who to ask and how to do so in either the most creative, cute, romantic, or funny way. Because I was an idiot (oh yeah, still am) and neither allowed myself to be associated with the words "romantic" or especially "cute" I decided funny would be my only hope of getting that mythical "yes". You ever seen an ant-hill kicked over by an unruly kid? Well that was what my school looked like in those final few weeks before prom. While the girls shrieked and giggled like flocks of deranged birds, making themselves as elusive and hard-to-get as possible, it was the boys that suffered the worse change. Something about the age, the floods of testosterone running through our systems, and our naive sense of what's cool-all of that, combined together: well, it was a mess. It was like every male in the school dropped 85 I.Q. points, which is really bad as I believe that more than half the guys didn't have 85 I.Q. points to spare.
"Hey man, I'm gonna stand on this lunch table and tap-dance while screaming out swearwords in Spanish. That'll make the girls laugh."
"Dude, check it out-I just drank a gallon-and-a-half of warm chocolate milk. I'm gonna go run outside on the track for an hour. That'll impress the girls."
"Hey, Cindy's looking fine today. I think I'll go slap her butt."
Yeah... sophistication was not the forte amongst the guys in my school. Being a tier above that level of stupidity, I decided that to impress the gymnast, I should do something creative, funny, yet not so painful that it would ruin any chance of me ever having a member of the opposite gender even look at me. So I created a brilliant idea. I would dress up in the school mascot outfit, a fat, jolly, swashbuckling pirate, roam the school looking for her during my lunch-break and give her a paper with the question asking her to prom. My plan continued to develop and I realized that instead of handing her any old note, I could give her a treasure map with clues, leading her to the question. So home I went, taking an old piece of paper, staining it yellow, drawing elaborate monsters and treasures on it and creating a riddle which when solved asked the question "will you go to prom with me?" I burned the edges of the paper to make it look old and found an old bottle to put it in.
The next day, I asked a few of the school cheerleaders (who thankfully were kind enough to help) to let me into their practice room where the suit was stored. With the help of a couple of my buddies, I stuffed myself into the suit (which had the strange smell of potato-salad sandwiches lingering inside it). I then roamed the school halls during lunch, and since I was hidden away in the suit and no one knew who I was, all the cool kids and popular jocks high-fived me, pretty girls took pictures with me, and I silently danced with a large Polynesian guy who I had never seen before in my life (I think he was in his mid-thirties, so I have no idea why he was in our school or how he danced so well). I felt good, but also as if I was on an acid-trip, faces blurring across my vision and strange lights filtering through the mask into my eyes and brain. It didn't help that the inside of the suit was hot, very hot and the smell of potato-salad sandwiches was growing stronger and stronger, fusing into my clothes and skin.
Eventually I found her, and with a swaggering confidence only brought on by the fact that no one knew who I was under the suit, I walked up to her with my treasure-map bottle in hand. She was sitting in the hall, back against the wall, laughing and talking to about twenty of her friends. That made my steps slow a little, but no big deal, I was still under my suit.
When she saw me approach, her face froze, and soon all her friends were staring at me as well, the conversations they had been having now frozen on their lips. I crouched down in front of her and handed her the bottle, still not having said a single word since putting on the suit (a mascot never talks, and I was taking my role seriously). She cautiously took the bottle and with hesitation, pulled out the map and read over it. All was quiet and I remember I had a goofy smile on my face. It was sucha ridiculous, stupid situation-and oh gosh, was that potato-salad sandwich smell leaking out of the suit? Ugh, it was intermixing with the B.O. I'd accrued in the stifling heat of my entrapment. Combined, I was starting to smell like an onion field overtaken by the backed-up sewage of a nearby canal. Yeah, not pleasant. After a few seconds, she looked up with a stone-faced look I'll never forget. Without blinking and with all her friends waiting with bated breath, she said, "No Raf, no I won't go with you." That's it, no "sorry, I have someone else", or "that's an incredible effort you put for me, but I'm not interested. Thanks Raf". I remember all of her friends started to snicker under their breaths, but everything else was a blur and I stood up as fast as lighting, turned, and wobbled back the way I came.
I put the suit back in the cheerleader's closet, receiving disgusted looks by them as the ripened smells within permeated their practice room. I didn't know who was the actual mascot, but unfortunately I'm sure the smell was blamed on me instead of whoever had eaten their lunch inside the pirate outfit.
My friends teased me for the rest of the school year over what had happened and I never stared that girl in the eyes again.

So that's an awkward moment I can think of. If you'd like to contribute, please comment an awkward story below!