The return of awkward

Look! Here I am, writing a blog post!

Some of you have been haranguing me about the lack of blog posts these past few months. The rest of you have simply stopped reading. Fair's fair and all that.

I'm actually writing this blog post on my iPhone, while waiting for some water to boil on the stove.

Yup, you read that right. Stove.

Later, I'll also be using the microwave.

I know. I'm so high-tech.

The catalyst for this post was not actually to tell you all about my brilliant new adventures in cooking (they're really more adventures in reheating at this point), the awkward moment that sparked this post is actually related to Twitter.

It's almost hard to believe, isn't it?

You guys all know that I'm a big fan of Twitter; I find out about a lot of interesting things (like Amazon buying Zappos, for instance), plus there are some funny people hanging out there, too.

I also follow quite a few local people, most of whom I don't actually know and it's led to a number of conversations with friends wondering if we unknowingly interact with the people we follow on Twitter. What if that obnoxious person on the T is a Twitter-follower? What if my gym-nemesis is someone whose tweets I actually like?

But the big question is often: If I ran into someone from Twitter on the street, would I recognize them?

Let me tell you: the answer is yes.

Yes, you will recognize them, especially if you are like me and have a such a strong memory for faces that it often makes other people uncomfortable.

See, the answer for me is "yes", but for you (and for the person I ran into on the street today) there's a good chance that the answer is "no."

Hence, the return of awkward.

The person I ran into today is someone I've followed for a while, we've even exchanged a few emails. Yet I was still completely at a loss for words. What does one say?

I've gone to a handful of tweet-ups and the introductions usually go something like this:

"Hi, I'm @someonesuperfunnywhohappenstoliveinboston"
"Oh, hi! Nice to meet you. I'm @eyemadequiet. No no, "I" like "e-y-e". Yeah. No, you don't know me. That's cool."

I'm totally comfortable not being "big" on Twitter, but imagine having that conversation, randomly, with a stranger on the street, someone you're 90% sure you know from the internet.

That 10% just kills me.

At any rate: it was nice to meet you, @lefauxfrog. Those are some nice headphones.