Wood's Words of Wisdom

• "If you can explain it, it's something other than love."
• "That will be the time I will mentally give birth to 55 puppies."
• "Is it a bribe or a gift?"
• "Ah, such a splendid little war."
• "No. White chocolate doesn't exist."
• "Brooklyn, people like you laugh at a joke three times. Once when I tell it, again when everybody else gets it, and once more when you get it four years later."
• "My birthday is Octujocember 38th. In other words, none of your nosy business!"
• "I am always so happy when I'm not the most OCD person in the room."
• "If at first you don't succeed, just be a bad example."

That Awkward Moment When. . .

It's become a phrase popular enough. Why is it that people feel "awkward"? What is awkward? Are we slowly evolving into less and less personal communication that when confronted with a challenging situation we blush and tweet about it? Or do we simply like to chuckle at our fairly sarcastic lives once in a while? Nevertheless, this was a list worth gathering and conjuring. Some are experiences of my own, others from dear friends of mine. Feel free to add on; to be continued.

That awkward moment when...
1. You say "Happy Birthday" to someone a day early.
2. "You try to pass someone in a narrow hall, and both of you keep choosing the same direction to pass."
3. "You say goodbye to someone, and make it way sincere, and then both of you leave in the same direction."
4. You don't understand why your hair isn't curling, then you plug in the iron.
5. "You're about to make a comment about someone when you see they're still in the room."
6. You are the only one with loud breakfast in Seminary.
7. You laugh for courtesy, still don't understand the joke, but then laugh harder as if it just clicked.
8. You lock yourself out of a church you don't belong to.
9. Your Physics teacher isn't sure how to pronounce "buck teeth."
10. "Your castmate throws a water bottle and it bounces off your spine."
11. Your history teacher reminds you of your parents.
12. Everyone thinks Snape is Harry's father.
13. You sent the "I love you" text to someone besides your mom.
14. Someone says "hi!" and you respond with "Fine, how are you?"
15. Someone suggests you and your cousin should date each other.
16. When you don't relate to the "that awkward moment when..." someone just said.
17. You show up to church an hour earlier on Daylight Savings.
18. You and your friend go for a different greeting handshake in the hallway.

Awkward |ˈôkwərd| [adj] causing or feeling embarrassment or inconvenience; uncomfortable or abnormal

Poem of the Month!

ODE TO MY SOCKS
Pablo Neruda

Mara Mori brought me
a pair of socks
which she knitted herself
with her sheepherder's hands,
two socks as soft as rabbits.
I slipped my feet into them
as if they were two cases
knitted with threads of twilight and goatskin,
Violent socks,
my feet were two fish made of wool,
two long sharks
sea blue, shot through
by one golden thread,
two immense blackbirds,
two cannons,
my feet were honored in this way
by these heavenly socks.
They were so handsome for the first time
my feet seemed to me unacceptable
like two decrepit firemen,
firemen unworthy of that woven fire,
of those glowing socks.

Nevertheless, I resisted the sharp temptation
to save them somewhere as schoolboys
keep fireflies,
as learned men collect
sacred texts,
I resisted the mad impulse to put them
in a golden cage and each day give them
birdseed and pieces of pink melon.
Like explorers in the jungle
who hand over the very rare green deer
to the spit and eat it with remorse,
I stretched out my feet and pulled on
the magnificent socks and then my shoes.

The moral of my ode is this:
beauty is twice beauty
and what is good is doubly good
when it is a matter of two socks
made of wool in winter.