I passed a woman in the hall today wearing shiny satin baby blue capris. Should such a phrase even exist in the English language?
...This was right after I had witnessed another woman, whilst walking and chatting, trip and fall flat on her face. While this does invoke the knee-jerk suppress-the-laughter reaction, my initial response was Proxy Embarassment, described here by Dude. I then felt ensnared by social anxiety... do I stop and check if she's okay? Do I publicly acknolwedge her clumsiness? I was walking away in front of her, so would it be awkward to stop, turn around, go back, and repeat steps one and two? As she was immediately surrounded by floods of empathetic women (dang those pointy high heels, peeps!) I thought the best plan of action was to simply pretend it didn't happen and keep going.
Great. Now I have guilt!
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Brings back some memories the year at notorious number nine--Asiankeng at the opening social, trying to strike up a conversation with Thad (the turkey):
"Hiiii...", with a big wave and a 180-degree turn back the other way as she realizes that he hasn't seen her coming.
That's my proxy embarassment :)
Actually, that's what the "Heyyyyyy!" as my subtitle of my blog refers to. Oh Thaddeus, why wouldn't you be my friend? My elusive unicorn, come back to me!!
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