An awkward moment

I often find that telling people about embarrassing moments makes them less embarrassing. I also find that other people usually find the moments less awkward than I do when they hear about them.

Anyway, here's an awkward moment that happened to me a few days ago in Camden. It's not that bad but at the time it made me cringe.

My sister and the other person I was in Camden with were queuing for the ATM. I was pretty bored and I didn't fancy pointlessly standing in a line, so I decided to check out this amber shop next to the ATM. Walked in, and it seemed really nice, you know, beautiful stones everywhere. I was looking around in the shop, admiring the amber necklaces and things, when the woman who probably owned it walked in. We greeted each other and then she said something that at first I thought was, "We've got lovely amber here." But she said it sort of quietly, so I wasn't sure. So I said, "Sorry?" and she said something that sounded like, "You've go lovely hair." But then it could have been, "We've got lovely amber here." The problem was, I wasn't sure which it was. It sounded more like,"You've got lovely hair," but it would be SO embarrassing if I had said, "Thanks," and she'd been talking about the amber. I knew I had to say something, or show some kind of reaction - soon. I couldn't ask because that would be awkward. There wasn't much time to think about how to react, and of course in a normal situation you don't think about how to react you, you just say what comes naturally. So at first I just smiled, and then I sort of let out a laugh that was a mixture between a grunt of, "Yes," (In case she was talking about the amber) and an appreciative smile (In case she was complimenting me on my hair.) I figured I couldn't go wrong with that, since it had many meanings and it was generally a positive reaction. She seemed a bit confused, as anyone would be, and said, "Yes, you know?" I just smiled again, sort of nodded slightly, in case she was talking about the amber. She just said, "You know? You already know this?" I shrugged, still smiling. By this point I was 80% sure she'd said she liked my hair but if I said,"Thanks," and it turned out that the other 20% was correct I'd feel like an idiot. So I said good bye with a smile still and walked hurriedly out the shop. I'm sure I left her pretty confused.

Now you should know that my hair wasn't particularly nice that day. In fact, it was a bit messy, but someone had recently told me I had nice hair so I wasn't sure. If it turns out she wasn't talking about my hair, this blog post is a lot more embarrassing than what happened then.