Blog Hijack #1: Awkwardness

I made the rash and foolish decision to hand over control of my blog to a bunch of writers. I made an imprudent promise to blog about anything and everything they told me to.

I did protect myself somewhat. I said I wouldn’t stoop to any subject that would lose me subscribers like dead baby jokes or how Justin Bieber isn’t actually that bad and maybe we shouldn’t laugh when he falls down a trapdoor. (If you haven’t seen it, google it. Trust me.)

My first blog hijack is from Iris: A list of the most hilariously awkward things that have ever happened to you.

Oh boy.

Awkward McAwkwardness #1: This wasn’t awkward at the time because I was about six and barely understood The Teletubbies (actually to be fair they still baffle me) let alone awkwardness, but when I think back on it, I cringe.

At school, the teacher tasked us with writing down all the words we could think of beginning with H. I dutifully wrote my list and presented my book to her. I imagine it was something like this.

Most of the class were still laboriously writing with their tongues sticking out the sides of their mouths, so to keep me busy she told me to count how many words I’d come up with.

Well, I didn’t want to count the words. So I sat down, stared at the paper, wandered back over to her and said “A hundred.”

I remember her saying, “Really? A hundred. Wow!” and she gave me a sticker.

I was really proud of myself for my wonderful lie.

Awkward McAwkwardness #2: When I was about seven I watched an English soap opera called Eastenders. The scripts are marginally worse than the actors, who are themselves marginally worse than flesh-eating bacteria.

There was a storyline running about a woman who was pregnant and didn’t know who the father was. There was probably some twist about both the suspected fathers being white and the baby coming out green and then she remembered being abducted by aliens and the alien turned out to be her long-lost brother who was on the run from intergalactic police because he’d killed their parents but it was because they’d abused him and they had a big emotional reconciliation scene before a train ploughed into them. Something like that.

Anyway, I was a very unimaginative child. Left to my own devices, I invented a game called Be In Eastenders Off The Telly. Pretending I was pregnant and not knowing who the father was, I wrote a letter to ‘Tony’ telling him I didn’t think the baby was his and so we probably shouldn’t have sex anymore and I loved David instead. This was purely because I didn’t like the name Tony and I did like the name David, so naturally I wanted David for a baby papa.

My mother found the letter and I had some explaining to do.

I think I was approximately as convincing as, “A hundred.” Thank god we didn’t know any men called Tony or David.

Incident #3: I’m noticing a theme: me lying.

I was apparently an unimaginative and mendacious child.

This one also involved sex at an inappropriate age. I was perhaps nine at this point, sitting in the living room listening to the TV. The news was on, and it was a story about freezing sperm. I looked up at the screen as the story ended and saw a chef preparing a leek.

I put 2 and 2 together in my unimaginative, mendacious mind. I skipped the counting again, not having learned my lesson from Awkward McAwkwardness 1, and came up with 100.

I concluded that sperm looked like leeks.

Despite my Dear Tony letter, I didn’t really have a great grasp on sex (which is a relief considering my tender age), but I did understand that the daddy put his thingy in mummy’s thingy and other thingies came out and made a baby.

So at the next sleepover with my girlfriends I breezily showed off my grown-up knowledge and explained that sperm looked like ‘big green vegetables’ and it was definitely true because it was on BBC News and BBC News is run by the Queen or something.

I don’t remember when I learned the truth, but I imagine it was quite a relief. I do like a nice leek but I prefer them chopped into manageable sizes and, ideally, only entering me orally.

I can assure you my sex scenes are anatomically and biologically correct and carry a No Leek guarantee.

Awkward McAwkwardness #4: Well there’s another theme here: me learning (badly) about sex from age-inappropriate TV shows.

I’m maybe 11 now, and enjoyed Men Behaving Badly. It was was very much a ’90s lad’ sitcom. I’m starting to think my TV viewing should have been censored a little more so really this is ALL my mother’s fault.

Anyway. There was a scene where a woman has a baby (I believe she knew who the father was) and decides to call it Bilbo.

Later on, walking to my nan’s house with my mum, I got a tad confused and raised the possibility of a child called Dildo.

She didn’t ask for an explanation. At least one of us was learning from these incidents.

Awkward McAwkwardness #5: I can’t let myself off the hook and only talk about childhood awkwardness, can I?

I’m 25. I’m at a work Christmas party. Mr Kaling and I arrive at the hotel early, check into our rooms, and peruse the room service menu as we’re rather peckish. I decide on crudités, hummus and guacamole. Mr Kaling chooses the cheesy nibbles.

I ordered a plate of crudités and Cheesy Nipples.

The room service person definitely heard it. There was an awkward pause. As he tried desperately to stay professional and not laugh, I died a little inside and asked him to make sure there were no leeks included.

Pro Tip: Don’t google ‘cheesy nipples.’ Just don’t. Especially in public.