Awkward Dave Returns in the Form of a Duck (or a Llama)

Awkward Dave reared his ugly head last Tuesday, and if it wasn't for my colleague Chantal, things might have gotten really awkward, but she heroically stepped in and saved the day; to understand the situation you need a bit of backstory . . . fifteen minutes before this Awkward Moment of Dave, I was introduced to a very silly game on Kevin's phone, called "Duck or Llama": the game is simple but frustrating, you are shown a picture of a duck, or a picture of a llama, and you must press the appropriate button -- "Duck" or "Llama" -- VERY quickly, or you lose; I was terrible at first but once I got the hang of it, I got quite good and scored sixty correct answers in a row . . . more than double what anyone else got; the pictures get more and more ridiculous and abstract: there are line drawings and close-ups and llamas with sunglasses and duck-butts and rubber ducks and stuffed llamas, and everyone has the same stupid story at the end of their round . . . either, "I was doing really well, and then I mistook a duck for a llama!" or "I was doing really well, and then I mistook a llama for a duck!" and this is the sort of thing that I can get obsessed with, which is why I don't have a video game system in my house, and so when a woman from another department, who runs a committee that I am part of, totally went out of her way and came upstairs to the English office solely to help me sign-up for a workshop at Columbia University, I really, really tried to pay attention to her; she showed me some forms and explained how to fill them out . . . but then, without realizing it, I picked up the phone -- determined to get one hundred correct answers in a row -- and started playing "Duck or Llama," and I guess this nice woman, who totally went out of her way to help me out with this project, made quite a face, but luckily my friend Chantal saw the face, and was a good enough friend to yell at me and tell me to focus, and this was enough to break my obsession with the game and allow me to finish the now rather awkward social interaction with the woman who had gone out of her way to climb the stairs and find me in the English office and help me out.

Attention NBC: Free Sitcom Idea!

This sitcom idea is inspired by a comment written by Clarence about my rave review of our new Shark NV500 Rotator vacuum . . . he speculated that 1990 Dave would be dismayed, disappointed and disgusted by the domesticity of 2015 Dave, and he's right, of course: 1990 Dave was a rude, insolent, slightly deranged illogical slob who spurned all responsibility and civility . . . and this is the premise for an amazing sitcom: 1990 Dave travels through a time warp into the future and he has nowhere to stay and no viable skills, so 2015 Dave has to take him in . . . it's a messy, funny, and ultimately endearing show, because 2015 Dave can't kill 1990 Dave-- and 2015 Dave's wife and kids have to put up with 1990 Dave and prevent 1990 Dave from harming himself, because he's destined to eventually stumble into another time warp and return to his own timeline in the past, where he will meet his wife and fulfill his destiny to become a fairly responsible, occasionally awkward, sort of civilized parent and citizen (who occasionally volunteers to vacuum the house . . . and to add another layer to the show, 2015 Dave's wife is strangely attracted to 1990 Dave, though he annoys the shit out of her with his puerile behavior, but she just can't help herself because he is a much better looking version of Dave than 2015 Dave).

Awkward Dave is on an Awkward Roll . . .

Terry, Mike and I were having a literary discussion in the English office about The Catcher in the Rye, and I said that one of the lessons that Holden has to learn in the novel is that things can't stay the same forever-- Holden wants to catch all the children running in the rye and save them from falling over the cliff of adulthood, which he equates with corruption . . . he wants put everything in a museum -- behind glass-- and, of course, this just isn't possible . . . he struggles most about his sister growing up, that she might eventually have sexual desires like Sunny the prostitute and he's also crushed that Jane Gallagher -- the pure and innocent girl that he platonically loves -- also has sexual desires and goes on a date with the studly Stradlater . . . and it was just the guys in the office and so I expressed this idea very succinctly . . . I said: "Holden has to learn that girls want to get out there and bang people too!" and -- Murphy' Law -- just as I said this the student teacher -- who is young and sweet and female -- walked into the room, and gave me an odd look, and so instead of just letting the comment hang there . . . which was awkward enough, I made the situation even more awkward by turning to her and saying, "Right?" and so now I had put her on the spot and she had to reply to this stupidity, and so she said "Right" in a not-so-sincere manner and then rushed out of the office . . . and then Terry described with great relish how incredibly awkward I made the scene, and I guess that is because he is a big fan of Awkward Dave.

The Specter of Walt Disney Raises Awkward Dave from the Grave

In the past decade, I've tamed Awkward Dave to some degree, but he still occasionally rears his ugly, awkward head; one of these times is when adults-- grown-ass adults--  proclaim their love of Disney World; this boggles my mind and-- unfortunately for my awkwardness-- we've got a bunch of these people in our school (and there are several in the English department!) and some of them visit Disney every year-- it's like a religious pilgrimage-- and some of them visit Disney World and they don't have children . . . and while I understand taking your kids there once so they don't feel alienated and neglected-- although my wife and I refused to go and swore we would never take our kids until finally my parents actually dragged us all there and footed the entire bill . . . I had a lot of problems with the experience, but I'm an extra-high-maintenance pain-in-the-ass . . . but that's not what this sentence is about, it's about the awkward fugue-like state I enter when adults mention their love of Disney World . . . I start saying crazy, insulting, and awful things right to their faces, and these are people I work with and see every day; here are some examples of things I start spouting to perfectly nice co-workers: 

-- I rant and rave about how lame it is to share a bunch of antiseptic engineered memories with the rest of the Philistines in the park; 

-- I explain how happy I was when an alligator ate a small child at the Disney Grand Floridian Resort and Spa because it injected some reality into the fantasy;

-- I told someone they were totally fucked in the head because she was touting the merits of the Epcot food and wine festival . . . I told her for that amount of money you could go to Italy and have real food and wine!

-- I like to call out people who claim they are feminists yet worship the princess culture;

so I've decided this can't go on . . . if people want to spend their hard-earned money on Disney vacations, so be it . . . I need to be more tolerant; also, I don't think they can help it-- I wish I could claim to have noticed this myself, but it was Chantal who pointed out that all the devout Disney worshippers are practicing Catholics . . . so maybe there's some tie-in between actually practicing religion and loving Disney-- and we all know you can't control whether you have that "belief" character trait . . . I don't have a lick of it and I think it saves me a lot of trouble (in fact, I just read a great little piece in The Atlantic about how politics has replaced religion in America . . . and Disney is better than politics, I suppose).

Awkward Dave and the Cheesesteak

Last weekend, we took a road trip to my brother-in-law's new place just outside of Harrisburg, and I wasn't terribly excited about making the trip: the weather was beautiful and I didn't want to spend two and half hours in the car-- and we were driving up Saturday, staying the night, and then driving back Sunday-- and I am loath to admit that I was treating these five hours in the car as an ordeal and my poisonous attitude was driving my wife crazy-- and while I admit my behavior was childish and immature, it was a very long drive-- and then, to add salt to the wound-- we couldn't find a spot to get lunch; fans of Awkward Dave know that I don't operate well in social situations when I'm hungry (I don't operate well in social situations to begin with, but add hunger and things get really ugly) and by the time we finally found a cheesesteak place, waited thirty minutes for them to complete our order, and finished the drive to Eddie and Lisa's place, I was grouchy and ravenous and so when we arrived, I immediately sat down and dug into my cheesesteak, which my brother-in-law completely understood because he knows me, but then Catherine's Aunt approached me-- she was visiting as well-- and I guess she was expecting some kind of formal greeting-- a hug or a kiss or something-- and I vaguely understood this expectation because of the way she was standing there, looming over me, and I started to wipe my hands off, but they were all covered in ketchup and melted cheese, and so I made an executive decision, greeted her verbally and kept eating . . . and then a few minutes later, when I was outside,I noticed that her little dog had escaped the house-- and it was my son's fault-- so I yelled (in a panic) to my son "go tell the owner her dog is loose!" and Catherine's Aunt heard this and apparently she was already offended that I didn't give her a hug when I was eating the cheesesteak, and then was doubly offended that I called her "the owner" instead of her name . . . but things were happening rapidly and I was hungry and tired and nervous that the little dog would get run over by a car, and so things were awkward between us for the rest of the day and she brought it up later in the evening, when everyone had drank a fair bit, and wanted to "clear the air" and we had to hug and then she had the nerve to criticize my hug-- I guess it wasn't emotional enough-- but my brother-in-law reminded her that I "wasn't much of a hugger" and I don't think either of us learned anything from the incident, so in that sense it was very much like a Seinfeld episode. 

These Might Be The Best Sentences of 2011

Last year I introduced the "These Might Be The Best Sentences" feature, in which a completely biased and rather lazy judge (me) hastily attempts to choose the best sentences of the year . . . and though this year I am still just as biased and just as lazy, I am introducing a number of categories and a Grand Prize Winner to make this feature seem more dramatic and legitimate:

1) in the "Generating The Most Passionate Discussion" category-- all of it vitriolic and all of it directed towards me-- my "miraculous" sentence 'What Balls May Come?" earns a spot on the list;

2) the winner of the "Personal Revelation" category is "I Use Probability to Solve A Marital Mystery";

3) "I May Have Given These Words of Wisdom to My Students" wins the "Pithy Maxim" award;

4) "No Principles=Happiness" is the hands down winner in the "My Wife Is Just A Little Bit Insane" category;

5) The Mystery of the Year is "A Brief But Inconclusive Tale of a Tail";

6) we have a tie in the Best Idea of Dave category between "Dave's Second Best Idea Ever!" and "Peacock Tail= 1959 Cadillac Eldorado Tail Fin";

7) in the Best Idea of Dave That He Can't Remember Conceiving Due to the Influence of Alcohol category, the winner is this gem of a sentence;

8) in the When the Odds Are Against You, Make A Sperm Joke category, the winner is this inspirational tale;

9) in the For Once Dave Actually Deserves an Apology category we have a rather prolix masterpiece, entitled "The Potato Chip Incident";

10) Krystina's Best Idea Ever wins the Best Idea by Someone Other Than Dave;

11) The Most Awkward Moment of Dave is this hypothetical and unusual entry;

and the Overall Grand Prize Winning Sentence (and also the winner of the prestigious Sentence That Made T.J. Make the Same Comment Over and Over Award) is not a single sentence, but instead an over-arching category of sentences that thematically dominated Sentence of Dave in 2011 . . . the award goes to The 2011 Taco Count! (and my wife is making tacos tonight as an appetizer for the party we are attending, and so-- God willing-- I should eat my 200th taco of 2011 sometime this evening).

These Might Be the Best Sentences of 2012

I just finished reading "The Year in Review" section of The Week magazine, and -- wow! -- Sentence of Dave did not tackle any of the big issues this year . . . in fact, I'm not sure I mentioned anything of significance that happened on the planet earth in 2012, but just because the content wasn't especially noteworthy, it doesn't mean that the style doesn't deserve recognition; so, without further ado, these just very well might be some of the best sentences I wrote last year . . . so take some time and savor them, as this is the closest you'll ever get to the brilliant and shining mind that is Dave:

1)  The Best Compare/ Contrast Sentence

2)  The Longest Sentence Ever Written About Chili

3)   The Longest Recurring Theme (with a Big Thanks to My Wife)

4)  The Best (and Simultaneously Most Disturbing) Photo Montage

5)  The Best Story With the Most Irrelevant Comments

6)  Grossest Title: "A Good Walk Spoiled (By My Dog's Anus)"

7)  Best Title (and Worst Idea): "The Potato Apostrophe Catastrophe"

8)  A Good Review of a Bad Movie

9)  Dave's Best Ideas Ever

10) The Most Impressive Streak of 2012

11) My Wife Is a Superhero 

12) Wildest Paddleboard Adventure

13) Dave and His Dog Nearly Die

14) The Most Emotional Sentence of the Year

15) The Least Emotional Sentence of the Year

16) The Best Book of the Year

17) The Most Inspirational Image of 2012

18) Dave is Dumb

19) And Dave is Awkward

20) But Dave Still Triumphs

Dave's Favorite Story About Dave

Other readers have shared their Favorite Stories about Dave, and most have these have been in the Awkward Moments of Dave genre, but I would like to tell my favorite story about Dave, and it's not awkward at all, in fact-- believe it or not-- I am the clever hero of the story, in the tradition of cunning tricksters like Odysseus, Loki, and Br'er Rabbit, but don't worry, this theme won't be a recurring feature because it never happened again, so enjoy the one time I came through in the clutch: several years ago, when my two boys were quite young-- just able to walk and talk-- and we took a trip to the Newark Museum, which has a mini-zoo, art galleries, a fire museum, and a natural history section . . . and we were walking from the mini-zoo to the elevators, and the only way was through the art galleries, and so I was making the best of it, pointing out things my kids could recognize in the paintings, boats and cars and colors; the museum was empty-- a ghost town-- and so the guards, who were probably bored out of their minds, started chasing Alex and Ian around a bit, which my kids loved . . . Ian went one way and  Alex ran the other, and I chased Ian because he was younger and then I heard BEEP BEEP BEEP from the room next door and when I got in there, I saw Alex touching a large painting, and this had triggered the alarm system-- so I told him you couldn't touch the paintings and apologized to the guards, but they weren't upset at him, of course, since they had instigated the running around, and when we finally got to the elevators, there was a post-modern sculpture next to the doors-- it was an intimidating pile of seven or eight televisions, and the top and bottom screens showed a silver Buddha head floating on the ocean, being buffeted by the waves, and all the screens in the middle showed the same rotating Buddha head, but each screen was tinted a different color-- red, green, blue, yellow, purple-- and right next to the tower of TV's was a video camera and a rotating Buddha head-- the same Buddha head that was on all the TV screens-- and so I wondered if the camera was actually filming the head and sending a live-feed to the televisions, or if they were just playing a loop of film, so-- naturally-- I stuck my hand in front of the camera (I also wanted to see if my hand would appear in a different color on each screen) and I was rewarded with both the image of my hand on every screen and the BEEP BEEP BEEP of the alarm-- like a child, I had set off the system, but when the guard jogged in to check out why the alarm was going off, I pointed to my son Alex and said, "Alex, I told you, you can't touch anything here-- it's a museum!" and then we got into the elevator and made a clean getaway; this is the only time in my life I was able to think on my feet and say the right thing at the right time, and-- even though I threw my eldest child under the bus-- it felt wonderful.

Perhaps These are the Best Sentences of 2013!

Negligent and lazy readers, here is your chance to catch up on a year's worth of Sentences by Dave ^TM and while these "winners" were chosen rather arbitrarily, I think they will give you a good idea of my best work in 2013, which is no worse than my worst work in any other year . . . and so, without further fanfare, here are some of the sentences of the past year that might be better than some of the other sentences of the past year . . . depending, of course, on your personal taste and predilection for this sort of thing . . . as there is no way I could could actually predict what sentences you personally would prefer . . . so let's just say that these are my favorite sentences of 2013:

Best Absurd Question and Answer;

Best Real Question and Answers;

Best Political Commentary;

Grossest Medical Anecdote;

Kids Say the Darndest Things;

Kids Do the Darndest Things;

Best Sentence About Dressing Like A Holiday;

Most Awkward Moment of Dave;

Dave's Greatest Athletic (and Pathetic) Moment of the Year;

Cheesiest Poem of the Year;

Alex Succumbs to Peer Pressure;

Tacos, Racism, and the Circus;

Best Incident Involving Hot Peppers (To Witness, Not Experience);

Best Attempt at a Motif;

Dave's Dumbest Moment of 2013;

Dave's Greatest Moment of 2013;

A Real Moment That People Claimed Was Fictitious;

and finally,

Something Valuable for Children.

Dave Is Awkward on a Bus!

 

 
Back by popular demand, the recurring feature you never thought would recur again, has, of course,  recurred again . . . it's time for yet another Awkward Moment of Dave -- this time the setting is a school bus, on a rainy day . . . and both the 8th grade boys soccer team and the 8th grade girls soccer team have been stuffed onto this bus (because our home field flooded) and it's now 6:00 PM and I've been with this screaming horde of pubescent maniacs for over three hours and there's not a seat to spare on the bus . . . I'm squashed between several kids and a pile of equipment and the girl's coach is up in the front of the bus trying to help the bus driver navigate home, so I don't even have an adult near me to commiserate with; the kid next to me is screaming in my ear -- high pitched, shrill screaming because his voice hasn't changed yet -- he is trying to convey some sort of primitive message to the girls team, and I ask him to stop once, then twice, and then I finally snap and tell him: "You're not allowed to yell until your voice changes -- it's so high pitched that it's breaking my eardrums" and this frank statement got him to stop yelling in my ear, but it also brought him to tears -- and so I learned that 8th grade boys can be very sensitive about their feminine, screechy voices . . . the kid in front of him tried to console him, he said, in a high pitched voice: "My voice is high too, and I know it" but it didn't help, the kid that I insulted, who was sitting extremely close to me, (making this an especially Awkward Moment of Dave) was despondent -- head down, holding back the waterworks -- and though I tried to apologize, it was an exercise in futility, and when I talked to him after we got off the bus -- and this was a chore, he was so pissed at me that he didn't even want to hear my apology -- I realized that he was so upset because there were girls present -- and he thought they heard my comment (though I doubt they did, the bus was extraordinarily loud) -- and I am sure this kid will forever think of me in the same way George Costanza thought of his mean and grouchy gym teacher, Mr. Heyman, who always pronounced George's surname "Can't stand ya!"

All Searches Lead to the Sentence of Dave

Here are some of the Google search entries that led people to this humble little corner of the internet: emo, giant wasps, japanese emo, testicular elephantitis, gay roller blade hockey, elephantitis face, child safety, punch a colleague, large swine pig, DAVE IN BACKYARD MONSTER, a pig dick, bubble, awkward dave, marla olmstead now, alan moore banksy, eddie izzard, orfanato, fish and fin sentence, emo light bulb, and bubbles making . . . and being the "go to" sight for these obscure topics makes me very proud, but not as proud as cornering the market on the phrase "residual glee."

An Almost Awkward Moment of Dave

Regular readers may be familiar with the many Awkward Moments of Dave . . . and fans of this recurring feature will appreciate how this incident was almost The MOST Awkward Moment of Dave: before I went running on my free period at work on Monday, I changed my clothes in the women's staff bathroom-- which is next door to the men's staff bathroom and has a similar layout, a square room with a sink and a toilet, but no stall or other feature . . . and both these bathrooms open right into "B-Hall," a busy thoroughfare with many classrooms-- and the reason I use the women's bathroom is because there is furniture: a chair and a  bureau-- and so while I am changing, I can put my clothes and belongings on the furniture instead of the urine soaked floor of the men's bathroom; it was cold Monday, and so I decided to wear spandex and while I was slipping out of my boxers, I was simultaneously fooling with my iPod and my underwear tangled around my ankles as I tried to flick it off with my foot and I fell, and because my hands were occupied, I fell hard and nearly hit my head on the toilet-- I was just able to break my fall with my left hand-- but if I didn't, and I knocked myself out, then the discovery would have been horrendously embarrassing, especially if it was between classes . . . a half-naked male teacher lying unconscious in the women's bathroom, with a pair of '90's style headphones tangled around his head . . . I was inches from infamy.

Awkward Dave Returns With a Vengeance and Suffers an Awkward Coincidence

Nothing upsets me more at school then when a student disrespects one of the hall aides, especially if the victim of the disrespect is an elderly lady, and so when I saw a student refuse to show the aide at the front door an ID (IDs are required to enter the building) and then walked away from her, I told her I would take care of it and I turned to follow the kid -- and as I turned, I caught him giving the aide the classic two-handed-double f-- you bird, and so I confronted the kid -- and he refused to show me his ID, and attempted to walk away -- and so I blocked his path and things got into that weird gray area where you've lost your temper with a student but you know you're probably not legally allowed to tackle him (but maybe you are?) and so you wonder how you're going to detain him (or you can simply just follow him, I once followed a kid who refused to show me his ID from the cafeteria into the gym locker room, where he attempted to hide in the corner) but luckily, before I completely blew my stack, another teacher showed up and she knew the kid's name -- and so instead of following him, I simply went to the office and wrote him up-- and all this happened before first period, I hadn't even taken my jacket off, so then I had some time to cool-off before my first class -- which is second period, as I have hall duty first period, but I still had to tell this wild tale to my Creative Writing class, but when I was halfway through, one girl said, "You better stop this story now" and I said, "Why?" and she said, "because that's her boyfriend" and pointed to a very sweet girl, who I turned to and said, "You're going out with a guy who gives the middle finger to old ladies?' and she smiled sheepishly and said, "Yeah, but I already talked to him about it, and told him he shouldn't do that."

Awkward Dave Learns Why Dreams are Stupid and Mean Nothing

I had an incredibly "realistic" dream last night that I ran for governor (absurd) and actually won the election (ridiculous) and then, when I went over to the statehouse to start my term, I learned that the salary was abysmally low (which is patently untrue, New Jersey governors are paid the fourth highest salary in the country-- 175,000 dollars) and so I told them that I couldn't afford to do it; it was embarrassing and awkward-- and everyone was really pissed off at me for wasting their time-- and, as a compromise, they made me do the job for a month while they found someone else, and that really annoyed me because I had to drive to Trenton every day, which ruined my summer vacation (also silly, as the next gubernatorial election in New Jersey will take place on November 7th).

Sentence of Dave > Facebook!

A new study by researchers from the University of Michigan shows that frequent use of Facebook leads to feelings of "envy, sadness, loneliness, and anger" and the researchers are confident that use of Facebook is causing these negative emotions, rather than the other way around . . . and the reason why this is true may be because people post an "idealized version of their lives on Facebook," and so when people visit the site it makes them feel lonely and left and out: Facebook makes them feel as if their lives can't compare to what they see on the screen . . . BUT if you visit Sentence of Dave, you feel great about your life, because you're certainly more logical, more confident, less anxious and less awkward than Dave (and you can probably write a more coherent sentence than him, as well, so make the healthy choice and stay away from Facebook . . . unless you're using it to link to Sentence of Dave).

Awkward Dave Pays For His Silence

Last year, when the Wawa checkout guy asked me how big my coffee thermos was, I said "20 ounces, I think" and since then I've always paid the twenty ounce price for my refill, but the other day-- when I forgot my plastic coffee thermos in my classroom-- I bought a sixteen ounce coffee in a disposable cup and when I returned to school I poured the sixteen ounces of coffee into my plastic mug, so that it would stay warm longer, and I found out-- to my chagrin-- that my plastic coffee cup only holds 16 ounces: the paper cup to plastic mug transfer filled my plastic mug to the brim (it's obviously larger because it's insulated, so I am an idiot) but I am too embarrassed to tell the folks at Wawa that my cup only holds sixteen ounces, and so they are still ringing me up for twenty ounces . . . but I did catch a break on Friday, because there was a new checkout girl, and when she asked me what size my mug was, I told her "sixteen ounces" and so I guess I'll just have to wait until the entire staff turns over before I consistently pay the proper price for my mug.

Five Years Of Sentence of Dave!

I have been writing this blog for so long, that I can't really remember much that happened before its inception (I refer to these events as pre-Sentence of Dave) and along the way I have evolved my style from its simple and clutter free roots to my current prolix bombasticity . . . my syntax has gone from grammatically correct to convoluted elliptical absurdity, and my diction -- which was once precise -- now often includes superfluous lexical garbage, such as repeated usage of the word ersatz and repeated misusage of the word miracle . . . and all this time, my dedicated fans have stuck with me, and so I would like to offer my sincerest thanks . . . I hope I can wring five more years of material out of the theme "Dave" . . . more fragmented logic and half-baked ideas, more awkward moments, more useless opinionated capsule reviews . . . I'd like to thank all the guys at Gheorghe:The Blog for inspiring this "spin-off" and especially Zman for his diligent and persistent commenting over here; and I'd like to thank my wife, children, and colleagues, both for providing material and for pointing out when I have done something really stupid, which is always the best content of all.

Sad But True (Awkward Dave Walks the Halls)

I'll never be a great man (for many reasons) but mainly because I need too much sleep (case in point: last week there was a half day for the students and so I had some free time to spend in my classroom, and a great man would have finished Amanda Gefter's Trespassing on Einstein's Lawn: A Father, A Daughter, the Meaning of Nothing and the Beginning of Everything, a fascinating book about the most metaphysical questions in physics, but instead I fell asleep at work in a plastic chair, head leaning against the file cabinet, feet resting on a desk . . . a position so uncomfortable that when I awoke, twenty minutes later, both my legs were asleep, from my glutes to my toes, and I didn't realize the extent that they were asleep until I had walked twenty yards down the hall, to the water fountain -- I'm always thirsty after a nap-- and that's when the pins and needles struck, and so I had to stagger back down the hallway to my room (on surveillance camera) and almost made it without being seen, but just before I opened my door a teacher rounded the corner and gave me a funny look (well deserved, since I was careening from one side of the hall to the other) and so, as I collapsed through my classroom door, I yelled to her, "both my legs are asleep!" so she wouldn't think I was drunk (an actual possibility, since we were able to leave the school for lunch because it was a half day).

Target at Target (Awkward Dave Goes to the Store)

This is embarrassing and it's taken over a week to process, but since I'm sorting out the situation this morning, I might as well summarize what happened:

last Friday, the day before we went to Sea Isle City, Catherine sent me to the store to buy a few last minute items for our vacation . . . she sent me to the store . . . I do all of my shopping with Amazon Prime now, so even planning for this was an adventure-- I needed peanut butter, granola, spandex underwear for the kids, and a small cooler for beer and snacks-- and so I made a detailed list of these items, with notes, and I figured I would go to a grocery store and a sporting goods store, but my wife said no, I could get all these things at the local Target;

I drove to Milltown, parked the car in the giant parking lot, and went into the store, a brightly lit vast cavernous space full of all kinds of new items (if you haven't been to a store in a while, I would describe it as a living version of Amazon, but all jumbled up) and the first thing I'd like to say is that I did a fantastic job shopping-- I selected an appropriate sized cooler (and there are a lot of coolers to choose from, I felt like Navin in The Jerk with his extraordinary thermos) and I found some multi-colored spandex underwear for the kids, to prevent chafing from the sand and surf, and I chose two different kinds of granola (there are a lot of different varieties of granola, each one healthier than the next, and the packaging is very enticing) and I got the right kind of peanut butter (Skippy Natural, No Need to Stir) and while I had certainly relied on my notes-- there's a lot of extraneous stuff in stores to distract you-- I had done it, mission accomplished, and now all I needed to do was check out;

I went over to the line area, which is pretty chaotic at Target, you have a number of slots to choose from and each slot has a near cashier and a far cashier, and I didn't know the etiquette, if you could just jump to a far cashier, but I did it anyway and the lady greeted me, she was middle-aged and portly and had some kind of foreign accent (Slovakian?) and she asked me if I wanted 5% off my purchase and I said "Sure" and she said all I needed was a Red Card-- which I assumed was one of those little doohickeys you keep on your keychain and they scan it with your items and you get a discount, I have one for our local grocery store-- and then I was immersed in answering a number of questions on the credit card charging screen, and they were fairly detailed questions-- the little screen wanted to know how much I earned annually and my address and my social security number-- which seemed kind of crazy, just to get a little discount card, but the cashier-lady with the accent kept distracting me, so I couldn't process how weird and detailed these questions were . . . ske kept asking me questions about my purchases, she was really interested in where I got the spandex underwear, as she wanted some for someone in her life (her husband? I don't know, I have a hard time doing two things at once, and it was traumatic enough to be in a store) and I kept telling her that I found the underwear in the boys department, and then I pointed towards the blue hanging sign that said "Boys" and she wanted to know if they had these in the men's department, and I told her I didn't know, and then I finally finished answering all the questions on the screen and fended off all her questions about the kids spandex underwear and then she she said, happily, "You've been approved!" and she informed me that I had just signed up for a brand new Target credit card and I told her that I didn't want a Target credit card, that I had just come to the store for four things, not FIVE things . . . a Target credit card was not on the list and she looked at me, perplexed, and I asked if I could cancel it and she said she didn't know how to do that, and I told her not to use this card on the purchase, that I didn't want to save the 5% and then I got on my high horse and told her she should be more clear about the fact that this Red Card was a credit card-- I was stern, but too confounded to really let her have it, although I was quite pissed off and felt I should have;

then I drove home to tell my wife the news, and I knew she wasn't going to be happy and she wasn't . . . she was like: I send you to the store for a few things and you come back with a new credit card, I don't want to worry about that!-- and then when I told this story at the beach, to my cousins and family, my mother pointed out that Target did a great job employing folks with special needs as cashiers, and I realized that this woman didn't have a Slovakian accent, she had a learning disability or a speech impediment, and she had preyed on me and probably gotten some kind of bonus because she signed up a customer for a credit card, and so though I'm annoyed that I've got to call Target in a few minutes and cancel this thing (it just came in the mail) at least I know in my heart that I helped out someone that needed a helping hand (inadvertently . . . and I did chastise her a bit) and I will never go inside a store again (except for looting, when this whole consumerist nightmare fall apart).

Whitney's Favorite Awkward Moment of Dave

Today we'll take a trip down memory lane and visit another Awkward Moment of Dave; this is Whitney's favorite and it took place in college . . . Whitney and I needed to volunteer for six hours of psychology testing in order to get credit for a Psych 102 class and it was coming down to the deadline so we signed up for what was available: an experiment for people who claimed to be "date anxious"; we convinced the professor that we were indeed "date anxious," which was probably true since neither of us really did much "dating," and as part of the experiment we actually went on "dates" with other "date anxious" folks and then filled out surveys about the experience; for our first "date" we picked up some underclassmen in Squirrel's little dirty car and our plan was to take them to the movies to see Harlem Nights-- which seemed to be an easy way to ensure that we wouldn't have to talk to the girls, which was important because we were both quite hungover from some serious partying the night before-- and it was extremely cold and the ground was covered with snow and ice, so we were all bundled up, Whitney driving, me sitting shotgun, the girls huddled in the back-- wondering about the two terse strangers that they were now at the mercy of-- and I must point out that sometime in the late night partying the night before, I had consumed a 7-11 microwave burrito, which I had doused with 7-11 chili and 7-11 jalapenos and 7-11 cheese, and I was having some stomach troubles and so I found it necessary to open my window and let some fresh air into the car, some very very cold fresh air, but also very very important fresh air, if this date was to continue without incident, but the girls in back took the brunt of the cold wind and yelled at me to shut the window, and Whitney turned and asked me what the hell I was doing and all I could think to say was: "Just wanted to check how cold it is out there."