Awkward Holiday Encounters

It wouldn’t be the holidays without some sort of awkward string of events. Everyone has stories and anecdotes about interesting family encounters and conversations and here are a few of mine from this weekend.

Every year I buy myself new underwear around the holidays. Generally it is more practical than anything else, and buying it for yourself definitely beats unwrapping underwear from your stocking on Christmas morning.  My new skivvies arrive in the mail just in time for Christmas, and as any girl would feel comfortable doing, I send a text message to my best friend telling her about my new bra. Only technology turned against me, and instead I ended up texting my ex-boyfriend. For the record, this is not the first time my so called “smart-phone” has pulled up the wrong person… In retrospect it is actually pretty funny, but at the time was really dis-heartening. Mainly because we are still in that awkward place of not really being friends, and I still struggle with wanting to tell him things about my life, and then of all the things I could have shared with him, I accidentally text him about a push-up bra/ how ridiculous it is? I should not be surprised, this is my technology karma coming back to bite me in the ass. At least I realized my mistake about a few moments, and attempted to recant, or at least tell him that it really was a technology malfunction, and not me being a psycho. I’m not sure if he believes that or not. On the bright side, I really do love the bra. I might want to crawl into a hole & wallow in my embarrassment, but at least my tatas will look good while I’m at it.

My next holiday snafu was at Christmas Eve Dinner. I was at a restaurant with my parents, and once we had reminisced about past holiday memories, the conversation was turning towards work. I started to change gears, and began talking about an episode of Radiolab that I had recently re-listened to on the topic of Deception. It is one of my favorite episodes, and I was explaining to my parents how there is a study that people who deceive themselves are actually happier and more successful in life. So I was giving examples, and citing specific things, and I mentioned how the baseline test in this study was asking people a series of questions that in general everyone denies like if you have ever had a fantasy about raping someone, or being raped, or if you have ever contemplated suicide to get back at someone… As I am explaining this, I look up and every single person sitting at the next table is staring at me with a somewhat perplexed and horrified look. It’s not like I was talking loudly or over emphasizing, but it was one of those moments where eavesdroppers entered the conversation at the wrong time, and so there I was, the girl in the restaurant talking about suicide and rape on Christmas Eve. It really is a great episode though; I highly recommend listening to the podcast.

Next was when my family was looking up movie times, and out of nowhere my dad says “It really is too bad about Lindsay Lohan” at which point my parents enter into a five minute long conversation about how much they liked her in the Parent Trap, and contemplating where her life went wrong. I’ve never really known my parents to be big into pop-culture… and though I love my family dearly it was a bit of a letdown to discover that neither of my parents recognized the name Pablo Neruda, and yet they could carry on a conversation about the life and trials of Lindsay Lohan.

Happy Holidays.