115. A Close Encounter of the Awkward Kind

You know those times when you're walking and someone is walking toward you directly in your path and you both try to move out of each other's way but you go the same way and then you have that awkward pause where you're staring at each other like "okay, are you going to move or am I going to move? Okay. Oh wait. Gah!"?

That happened to us yesterday, in a way, except we were in cars. See, we got in the suicide lane to turn left into Walmart, at the same time that this other car also got in it. Now, the other car got in way down the road, so we figured he'd turn left at one of the three driveways between us and him. He didn't. While we waited for a clearing in the oncoming traffic, this car just kept slowly coming up toward us. And then they just stopped in front of us. 

So there we are, staring down this old couple, awkwardly trying not to look into each other's windows, but trying not to be obvious about how awkward it was. See, there was no driveway to our right. The next place he could turn was the stoplight, several fee behind us. And by several I mean the stoplight is past one end of Walmart and our turn was at the other end. So not only were we laughing at how absurdly early this guy got into the turn lane, and how awkward it was that we were stuck staring each other down, but then the poor guy's wife starts I-told-you-soing him. Seriously, I didn't know where to look. But then, not looking was awkward, too, because we all knew that we weren't actually interested in what was outside our windows but that we were purposely not looking at each other. So we'd look back in an effort to play it cool, but then we'd awkwardly be staring at each other unable to actually communicate because of the two windshields and engines between us. It was awkward (did I say that already?) and highly amusing. And the traffic just kept coming past.

After about a minute and a half of this awkward "do I look at them or out the window or at my kids behind me" we were finally able to turn and break the tension. 

Moral of the story: listen to your wife.