yet MORE awkwardness with car Matt

I received a phone call yesterday afternoon from Detective Curry at the Penn Police. She requested that I come to the police office immediately because she needed to "ask me a few questions". I immediately felt panic--did I do something illegal,? was someone hurt? did my car get stolen? I couldn't imagine what it could be about and the only information she would give me was that no one was hurt. I went and it turns out that Car Matt thought that my car was stolen and that I was trying to steal his money so he called the police on me. OH MY WORD!!! Everything was cleared up and Detective Curry was lovely. However, the conversation I had with Car Matt after the police ordeal was, as you can imagine, QUITE awkward.

More awkwardness with Car Matt

I was talking to Matt on the phone yesterday. We were trying to iron out some details about the car, etc. Well, he was looking something up and I was waiting for him. I have this habit of humming to myself while I'm waiting for things or when I'm walking down the street. I usually don't do it on the phone. But apparently I forgot I was on the phone and started humming. Then Matt says, "Are you humming?" I replied, "Yes, yes I am." Matt, "Oh, that's really weird."

Is it about smoking weed?

I'm in the process of selling Trogdor as some of you may know. A few days ago, I was showing it to Matt. He was looking at it and inspecting it when he saw the Trogdor bumper sticker and asked, "What is that?"
--I replied, "Oh, it's kinda an inside joke with my friends. We call my car Trogdor. It's from this internet website called HomestarRunner. It's an internet cartoon."
-Matt (seeing that it says Trogdor the burninator), "Does it have to do with smoking weed?"
--Me, "No, no, no...it's an internet cartoon. You know, a joke...er...Trogdor...he goes around burning things because he's a dragon. Like he burns villages...and villagers and cottages...um...yeah, it's an internet cartoon."
Upon further reflection, I realized that Matt must think I'm crazy with my "weed smoking" bumper sticker and my "I love Jesus" air freshener.

Silence can be golden

This past week I had the opportunity (along with my bro Ethan and sis Natalie) to tag along with my dad as he participated on Rod Hall's Hummer racing team in the Best in the Desert 1000 mile race. Overall the trip was a blast and I got to get our little Saturn really dirty and pretend it has four-wheel drive. But there was certainly an air of awkwardness about the trip as well. Firstly, the other 15 or so men on the trip don't really talk. At least, they didn't really talk to us - the random kids that no one knew. So that made for lots of sitting next to my dad's teammates in....silence..... and since I had NO IDEA about racing and for each of them racing is THEIR LIFE, I didn't really have anything to talk to them about. I tried a couple of times to strike up conversations - both awkward failures.
1) I remembered one spiffy racing phrase from previous conversations with my father: "open class." So when he was walking by with one of his racing buddies I very smoothly tipped my chin and said
> "so Dad, you guys racin' open class?"
...the other guy laughed at me as my dad said
>"Huh? No, Marla. This is full stock truck."
...I later learned that full stock truck is actually the very opposite of open class.
2)A little later, I tried to talk again. One of the drivers was saying hello to us, so I, the stunning conversationalist, said to him
>"Josh, your wife is Australian, right? That's so cool! I studied for a semester in Australia last year. I would love to meet her. Did she come along this time?"
...there was a slight pause, and he quietly replied
>"Well, no. She's actually still recovering from cancer."
...at this point I remembered that she had recently had major surgery for a terrible type of cancer. Way to bring up sad subjects and kill any remnants of conversation.

The moral: don't speak unless spoken to or just pretend to be mute.

Jesus loves the awkward

I thought of you all and of the awkward blog today in church when Dr. Ryken said the following things:
1) Jesus loved to create socially awkward situations. The example from this morning was when he created awkwardness at a dinner party by asking the Pharisees questions and catching them in their hypocritical ways.
2) Not only did he love socially awkward situations, but he loves socially awkward people.

Breaking News in Gilbert (a brush with fame)

So I was at the library today studying for the MCATs and was a bit pressed for time and kind oftired of learning about the cell cycle, and so I opted for a quick lunch break in front of the library. While I was eating my yogurt, this dude came up to me and said "excuse me; I'm a writer for community speak-out section of the Arizona Tribune, and I was wondering if I could ask you a quick survey question." I had no desire to comply, but since I was sitting on a bench eating my yogurt, I couldn't very easily say "oh no, sorry I have to run..." or anything like that. So I said "ummm okay, but I don't really live here," hoping that would deter him. He seemed a little confused as to why I was hanging outside of the public library in Gilbert, Arizona on a Thursday afternoon if I didn't live there, so I qualified. I said "um, well I mean my family grew up here, but I've been going to school on the east coast for four years and am going to move to Boston soon and am really just here visiting, so my opinion isn't really pertinent. You should probably ask someone else." He followed up with "soooo, are you just here for the summer then?" "Yes," I said, certain that that would be grounds for disqualifying me from the survey. "Great! That counts," he retorted. I think he probably was kind of tired of standing in the sun and would have accepted any living being. I wasn't really bothered by the fact that my lunch/reading had been disrupted or anything like that, but I was more terrified by the thought of being one of the people in the community section of the Tribune with a random, unintelligible quote next to a dorky little snapshot of me. But, as I said, I was trapped, so I complied. "The question is," he said, "Gilbert has recently been named the fastest growing community in the United States. How do you feel about that?" Shoot. I pondered it like one would a Miss America pageant question with about 30 seconds of "umm.... well..... let's see..... that's a tough question to answer.... there are a lot of..... avenues......." I wanted to tell him that I hated that the 30,000-person town I moved into now has a population of 171,000, that everything that was farmland in Gilbert has turned into track homes and stripped it of culture, that there are traffic and Targets everywhere, that the temperatures had increased because of so much asphalt and engine exhaust, that I worry that Gilbert won't be able to sustain its size in the future because it seems to be attracting mostly houses and barely any commercial businesses. Instead I offered this pearl of wisdom: "Well, it's a little tougher to get around, but I get it makes sense that it would be this way because it is such a nice place to live." THIS JUST IN: MARLA STUMP OF GILBERT, ARIZONA THINKS THAT IT IS SUCH A NICE PLACE TO LIVE. I can just see the riveting section tomorrow. And that was it. The reporter snapped an awkward photo and left. And I finished my yogurt.