The Awkwardness

Every now and then, some minor event kind of strikes me a bit.  So why not talk about it.  Worst case, you won’t be interested.

Anyway, I’m at the drive through at the Big Coffee Franchise because I needed a fix and because they are running some kind of stupid promotion where you get bonus points if you get a coffee at five different locations.  Since there seems to be one of these places on every block, it wasn’t hard to get four and the fifth one was near work so I figured, why not.

Its a little before lunch and I’m the only one in line so I order and roll up to the drive through window and she scans my app and then tells me drink will be out soon.  A lot of times, they will close the window after that but she left the drive through window open.  And, she wasn’t making my drink or taking other orders so she’s basically standing right beside the open window.  We are basically within arm’s length of each other kind of pretending that the other one isn’t there so there is no awkward small talk.  I couldn’t even really use the typical dodge of burying myself in my phone since I didn’t have my reading glasses on.  I guess I could have kept up the illusion since she wouldn’t have known.  So I catch her doing some random busy work like adding straws to the the dispenser and it feels like she’s just trying to get the people making my drink to go faster before she runs out of things to do.  I can’t really close my window because I don’t know when the drink is coming.

This may have been a “you had to be there” moment but it just struck me as kind of a strange, awkward moment like we were both pretending there wasn’t a human being within earshot.  Well, I was more responding to her vibe since it was clear she had no interest in any sort of conversation so the last think I’m going to do is start something up or stare vacantly into the store which would be a bit creepy.

When I go into those places, it is typically a different story.  I guess it is somehow harder to ignore a person when you are both in the same room.  Not that I’m a great small talk person – introvert and all.  So I offer a few general observations but mostly listen – for some reason many of the people who work at these places like to chat.  Yes, it may seem odd for an introvert to actually engage people rather than burying myself in my phone (which I’ve seen others do) but it goes along with introverts not really being anti-social.  Some of us do find other people interesting and we can interact and a coffee place is kind of perfect since you know that your conversation time is going to be limited to a few minutes.  I can mostly handle small talk for a couple of minutes without it getting too awkward.

I just realized that I’m going to need to let the people at my night coffee place know that I’m likely to vanish.  The studio is moving at the end of June and the path from my house to the studio will be different and I won’t pass by this coffee place anymore.  I’m not really sure how much they will care and, in the years that I’ve been going to the studio, I’ve seen multiple people come and go.   Still, most of them know my name and are friendly so I just wouldn’t want them to think I’ve dropped off the face of the earth.

With the studio moving, it likely means a two week break from dancing.  They may be open towards the end of the last week in June but, right now, they are expecting to be closed that entire week.  And then the next week after that is July 4th (already??).  I’m not sure if they’ll be open and I’m going to be off work that week so I might skip my lessons anyway.

We did go back through the Tango on Tuesday.  Much of this is the same.  I was spoiled by having more experienced instructors who really knew the steps.  I’m not saying I can’t lead but the reality is that it they could cover up for a lot.  With JoNY, I’m required to do more and it does feel like we are tearing things down and starting over in places.  As I’ve said, this always brings up the constant battle in my head when I start to see how much I don’t know (or wasn’t really taught).  It also continues to bring up the question of why I’m still doing this and whether I’m really going to be able to commit to doing the work – because this is work.

But I do see from time to time that OwnerGuy is able to point out things that I need to work on and when I’m able to do them, it does make certain parts of the tango easier.  It does start to get a little overwhelming when I start trying to catalog all the little pieces of information.  He’s starting to talk about some future events and plans and I’m still not 100% sure I’m convinced this is the right path.  There is just some part of me that doesn’t want to give up until I’ve at least seen the new studio and what the vibe is going to be like at that place.  Yeah, I’m not sure how much it might change but, once the move is done, it does take one big thing off OwnerGuy’s plate and that’s why I’m thinking things might feel different.  So that’s where we are after the first lesson back from vacation.