awkward moments

Awkward Moment #1

I stood up to turn a page of music, and my adult piano student said to me in the middle of her lesson, "My GOD, you're tiny!"

Now, this sort of out-of-the blue, out-of-context remark about body size always leaves me feeling...uncomfortable. There is no way she could know that I am in recovery from an eating disorder, but even if I had never struggled with body image and food, I think exclamations about people's weight are just darned awkward.

What are you supposed to say? If you are a woman, and someone exclaims that you are tiny, I think you are supposed to say, "Thank you," as though it were a compliment. Or, better yet, you are supposed to coyly deny it.

"Oh, stop it. No, I'm not!" And you're supposed to squeeze your stomach and say, "Just look at how fat I am!"

That's what you are supposed to say, because you are supposed to assume that (a), it is a compliment and (b), that you are too humble to accept such high praise, such attention and glory for the ultimate ideal for a woman--thinness. But, because I don't really appreciate any comments on size/weight/body appearance, and because I lost interest long ago in playing the body game, and maybe also because we were in the middle of a piano lesson, I had no idea how to respond.

Instead, I kind of stuttered, "Uh...yep," and turned the page and went about the business of explaining some musical term. Which, in retrospect, seems like a really odd reaction.

Awkward Moment #2

Another awkward moment occurred a few days later when I took Luna for a walk around Lake Como. We were about halfway around, when a woman appeared out of nowhere, walking beside us. She raved about how adorable Luna is, how much she misses her dead dog, and how much fun she had traveling recently in Scandinavia.

This is all without introducing herself. It was a cold day, and Luna didn't seem to mind this woman, so I figured what the heck, let's listen to her stories while we finish our walk. She went on and on about her three grown children, her grandchildren, and an upcoming trip to Hawaii.

Finally, she asked me a few questions about Luna. I responded using the genderless "we," as in, "'We' got Luna about three months ago," and "'We' weren't looking for a dog, but when 'we' saw her, 'we' couldn't leave her."

And the woman said, "So does your husband just love Luna too?"

Awkward Moment #3

I openly admit that I have a boy-crush on a certain co-worker. It's very innocent--the kind of crush that you wouldn't ever admit unless something like this happens:

I happened to be on the floor. (It's really not that unusual in my line of work as a preschool teacher.) I was cleaning up some water from this thing we like to call the "water table," where kids stand and roll up their sleeves and play in a table full of (you guessed it) water. It was the end of the week, so we had drained the water. Noticing there was a small spill on the floor, I took the initiative to clean it up. After soaking up the excess water, I stood up and absentmindedly dried off my hands by wiping them on my jeans.

At the precise moment that I brushed my hands off my jeans and out into the air, my unassuming coworker happened to be walking past.

And I accidentally hit him....

Right in the nuts.