if i don't know you...

Meeting new people is an interesting social interaction. You are approached, or you approach someone, hold out your hand and say, Hi i'm _____. This (hopefully?) starts a conversation of generally boring topics like, where they are from, what do they do, are they up here doing the internship and whatever.  But when this goes wrong, when somehow the introduction goes awry, it is sometimes tricky knowing who brought the awkward to the table. what was said? not said? Hopefully i'm not the only one who thinks this is the hardest part of having a social life.

So one of my favorite ways that the introduction can fail, is a complete fail. You are standing in front of each other. Neither of you know each other, your friends are talking, but neither of you extend that first "hello." Sometimes it is clearly one person's obligation to do so, usually it should be those talking friends who are ignoring you, but for some reason or another it never happens. When this occurs though, you have seen this person and will usually ask your friend who they are later. So what ends up happening is this:

- you know ____?
-mmm, that one from the party with the hair?
-yea.
-well, i don't know him, but i know who you're talking about....

WHA!? Why? So awkward. Mutual knowledge but never introduced, strange really.

Another favorite, is when someone you don't know, but know of, taps you on the shoulder in sunday school and tells you to go sit with someone else you don't know cause you're sitting alone and they're sitting alone, and that would be nice of you.

Well you know, you could always sit with her....well i could but you're sitting alone.... right.