Awkward

By: Peet Montzingo

            A unique adjective, awkward describes verbal, mental, and physical behaviors.  In any situation, anyone can use an awkward gesture, utter an awkward comment, make an awkward movement, or think an awkward thought.  In result, someone may look at this person in a loss of words, a feeling of chagrined, and a lead up to an awkward pause.  The effect of this eventually will lead to embarrassment.

            Mental and verbal awkwardness occurs in many shapes and forms, and happens everyday.  If something feels inappropriate, unneeded, and/or different, then you know it is an awkward moment.  Many times, for example, if you are lost in a city, you are mentally awkward, and don’t know what to do.  You feel a sense of something wrong, but it is hard to deal with, making it awkward.  Because you fear ridicule from asking questions of strangers, aimlessly you walk around, hoping to find a way.  It’s common that people feel awkward verbally as well.  When a boy asks a girl to a dance, he may not be able to speak clearly because he is so nervous.  He feels awkward.  In addition, this moment can lead to disturbing pauses, or it can lead to a physically awkward movement.

            Moving clumsily, being ungraceful, and reacting ungainly can become awkward.  When you strangely move your body in someway out of the “norm,” people around you don’t know how to act; therefore, it is technically awkward.  An example of being physically awkward would be a boy asking a girl to dance when he doesn’t know how.  Flailing his arms about, he would start to dance and then feel awkward, because now both the boy and the girl realize he can’t dance.  This would lead to embarrassment for both of them.

            The one emotion humans dread more than anything is feeling embarrassed.  It is part of the human culture to want to feel as if you “fit in.” Because feeling embarrassed is the opposite of feeling comfortable, you have no choice but to get mad at yourself because of the frustration of feeling embarrassed caused by being awkward.  This usually leads yet again to an awkward pause, making that person and everyone around him grope for words.  Finally, the reaction is nervous laughing, leaving, and/or saying something else even more awkward.

            To describe word awkward, four words come to mind: inappropriate mental, verbal, and physical actions, and the resulting embarrassment.  All of these play an important part to define the meaning.  Many times and many ways awkwardness happens everyday.  Some are more severe than others, but in the end, everyone will encounter an awkward moment and feel embarrassed.