My Awkward Life | The Very Impressed Man

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?

My Awkward Life | The Very Impressed Man

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.