On this weeks all new and exciting episode; Darren invents a new word, Fergus buys an ice cream and someone somewhere answers a phone call.

This is My Awkward Life. 

Welcome. 

Let’s begin. 

This is the tale of a man who was very impressed with something. 

Plus, me, who just happened to be there when he saw the thing that he was impressed by.

Impressed yet?

You betcha.

Anyway, let’s really begin this time.

Recently, I found myself with a few hours to spare from work, so I arranged to meet up with my recurring character friend; Darren ‘Tactical’ Truslove on his lunch break. 

Darren, who is currently interning/in a hotel here in town, was a man on a mission as he set about getting the prints on a reel of film, to quote his exact word, ‘denegatified’ for work. 

“Denegitified?” I asked him, “Is that a word? I don’t think it is…?”

“Shhhh, it is now!” he responded with a laugh. 

‘Denegitified, Denegitified, Denegitified…’ I repeated over and over in my mind, trying to get my head around both the spelling, knowing that it would bother me the rest of the day if I didn’t. 

‘I mean, how would you even go about defining that?’ I thought to myself, my mind now completely off topic as to what Darren was now talking about back in the real world.

*Insert Darren White Noise Here*

‘Could you say; taking the negative out of it maybe? That could work?’ I think. 

Somehow in the midst of my strange inner ramblings about the meaning of a made up word; my body, mouth and auto-pilot function had managed to keep up a relatively decent conversation with Darren throughout. 

I was in the clear!

(Well, until he reads this story that is; Hi Darren!)

With my apparent good conversational skills intact, we soon reached our destination; a local beauty shop which hides in its bowels, a photo processing centre. 

While Darren went up to explain what we needed done for work, I went about trying to look busy and not at all suspicious while standing in the shop on my own. 

That’s when I heard it. 

“Mmmmhmmm, oh yes!” 

‘What the heck?’ I thought to myself. 

“Oh yes, mmmmhmmm, haha!”

I look around for the source of the noise and see a man, who by the looks of it must be  in his 70’s, staring up and down avidly at a display on the shelf, the contents of which I cannot see clearly from where I am. 

“Mmmmhmmm, yes, yes, yes! Mmmmmhmmmm!” this man continues, now bending down to look at the lower parts of the shelf, obviously very impressed with what he was seeing. 

‘Do I walk away from him? Do I ask him if he’s okay? I don’t really know the protocol here…’ I ask myself. 

‘He could be having a stroke? Are these the symptoms of a stroke? Making noises that sound like you’re impressed but really, you’re having a stroke?’ 

Right that second though, he gets up and just walks away and disappears around the corner. 

‘I have to know what he was looking at!’ I think, making my way casually over to the display; ‘What could have been so interesting that he—‘

Condoms. 

Rows of condoms. 

The man, who looked to close to being in his mid-70’s and who was making very loud approval noises, was looking at rows and rows of boxes condoms. 

I mean, what do you say to that?

Oh, then myself and Darren bought ice-cream.