An Old Sunburn, Awkward Situation and Nervous Habits

Disclaimer: This post is kind of gross. Well, I think it's kind of gross. But, it's funny too. Just wanted to warn you in case you get all squeamish and icked-out easily. If that's the case, just skip this one and read the next post :)

I get nervous sometimes when I'm around new people. And when I'm nervous, I do weird things. Like scratch my legs or arms or hands, even though they don't itch. Or sometimes, I will play with the hem on my clothes. Or pick at my cuticles. That last one can sometimes mean that all of a sudden I'm nervous and have blood-covered fingers.

Ew.

So, this past weekend, there was a whole lotta nervous.

I went with a friend to Chattanooga, TN to visit her family. She told me it would probably be a little awkward because..... well.... that's just how families are sometimes. My reply was, "Well, no worries about that. I will probably just make it more awkward."

So, we were sitting there talking with her grandma and mother and I kept getting more and more nervous. Nothing crazy was going on, I just wasn't sure what to say, if anything, and the thoughts in my head resembled this:

"What if she asks me a question? I haven't been listening that closely!"
"I have to go to the bathroom, but I don't want to interrupt her story!"
"That's what SHE said! Wait... did I just say that out LOUD?!?!?"
"Oh, crap!! My clothes don't even match each other! They do think I'm weird!"

It wasn't that I really cared what they thought of me. It was more like I want to interact with people on a level that it deemed socially acceptable (That does NOT include saying "That's what she said." Ever.)

The more I thought, the more nervous I got.

The more nervous I got, the more I scratched.

My newly-sunburned-now-starting-to-peel legs.

So, here's the gross part.... in the middle of my friend's grandmother's story about civil rights and racism, I realized that I was scratching loose my skin. It looked fine before, but at that point, it looked all freaky. So, naturally, I set out to discreetly (as discreet as one can be) pick the skin off to keep my bare legs from looking sick and nasty.

But after doing that for a few minutes, I realized I didn't have anywhere to put the skin.... so, I just hid it in a wrinkle of my skirt and thought that no one would know.

I'm not sure if they knew at the time, but I felt so successful in my ninja-skin-peeling that I confessed to my friend and her mom. I'm not sure if they were grossed-out or amused. I was embarrassed for a few minutes and then got over it. I mean, I warned her that I would probably make things more awkward, right? Haha!

Thankfully, her family looked past my odd-looking legs (have you ever seen half-peeling/half-fresh skin? It's icky!) and we seemed to have a good weekend.

To avoid a repeat in the future, I may just wear pants.