the walk of shame. pretty girls and celebrities don't tongue tie me, bank tellers and grocery cashiers do. having to make that small talk while waiting for a transaction to process or gross total to appear is just confusing to me. i start to think anything out of their mouths is directed at me. i'm standing in line, there's a pause while the teller's waiting for my check to cash, she says "i'll be right with you sir." i immediately answer back "oh, okay, no problem."

clearly, any intelligent person would reason that she was talking to the guy waiting in line behind me. but when faced with three minute conversation situations, i just sort of freeze up. i figure the interaction between me and them (them and me) is so short that i can pretty much say anything; so i kind of forget to concentrate about saying something.

i end up responding to "have a nice day" and "come see us soon" with non-standard unslick outros like "cool, see you later" or "peace." the correct response for normal humans is to say "thank you" and/or "you too."

then as you walk away, you feel kinda stupid for not following the standard outro procedures. but at the same time, you kind of already committed yourself to saying stupid things when you declined to concentrate on the task at hand. so really, in those seconds post-idiocy, do you get upset at society for having these meaningless yet brain draining outros? or do you get embarassed for yourself because you suck so bad at them?