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Accidental Creeper

I had a rough couple of weeks recently. It was all completely accidental, but for about a two minute span split over two different encounters, I saw (female) friends and acquaintances of mine give me some downright dirty looks. Luckily it all blew over, and eventually everyone had a good laugh about it, but, oh man, were those some hard-earned laughs.

Let's start with the incident at the bar. I have a couple of friends who live overseas, so I never get to see them. They're good people, though, so when they stopped by in the area, I jumped at the chance to see them. I'm not their only friend, though, so they decided to just hang out at a bar and have people show up to spend some time with them. Now, "they" happens to be both a guy and a girl, so I couldn't look for any one particular person; I pretty much had to look at everybody in the bar to figure out if that person was my friend.

Luckily, I spotted the female half of the couple pretty quickly, so I didn't have to stand there looking like I was checking everybody out. I tapped her on the shoulder and threw out a quick, "hey!" with a smile on my face. And ... that's when someone I didn't recognize turned around and gave me a blank look. I froze. I didn't know what to say, and I sort of stuttered an apology and said I was looking for my friend.

As it turns out, my friend's sister was also there, and she looked a lot like her from behind. I didn't know this, though, and I'd never met her sister. So, I stumbled into a really awkward situation completely unintentionally. The Mild Girlfriend, however, laughed her head off when she heard this. Apparently this is a fairly common move for guys at the bar trying to make the first move with a girl they don't know. In fact, she's been on the receiving end of it enough times that she immediately knew how my friend's sister felt. Great. Just great.

This particular story ends well, as I eventually my found my friends, and then I was formally introduced to the sister. Everyone had a good laugh about it, and it turned into a funny story for me. It's just that in between the time that I met the sister and I was introduced to her, she thought I was a random creep. Hard earned laughs, indeed.

About a week later, I had a similar experience in an entirely different setting. This time, I was driving home from the office, and I spotted my friend crossing the side walk. I tapped the car's horn to say a quick "bye." As she would later tell me, she thought that "it was going to be some stupid guy trying to holler at the crosswalk." That would also explain why she hesitated before turning around. She did, though, and then threw me a quick wave before heading off to her own car. Great, that was twice in the span of like two weeks.

Again, we had a good laugh about it once we figured out what had happened. What's more, I shared my earlier story from the bar, since I couldn't help but shake my head at my luck. Cue more laughter. That also led to her dubbing me the creepy guy who tries to get at girls at the bar and the crosswalk. That led to even more laughter.

I lead a rough life, I tell you.

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