A while ago, my father and I found ourselves having to socialize with some odd people and the whole thing was quite awkward. We were all sitting in a booth having a little dinner. I was sitting next to my old man when he leaned over and said, "Gary Poll."... and that was it. My dad was obviously having a little logical conversation in his head and decided to have me join in at that particular point with no other explanation. A few minutes passed (maybe it was seconds) before he realized what he had done. He then went on to catch me up on his conversation he had been having with himself.
Apparently a long time ago, mi papa was out to dinner with an old neighbor (I am not referring to the age of the neighbor, rather to the fact that he no longer lives in our neighborhood. Hence he was once a neighbor or, in other words, an old neighbor) named Gary Poll. During dinner, they got to talkin about an awkward experience that Gary had and he mentioned that while this awkward situation was playing out, all he could think about was how good of a story it would be after it was all over. Or something like that. I can't remember the exact story. Anyways, what he was trying to say was that any awkward experience is survivable because you can know that its almost always going to be a good story after.
Rob introduced this theory to me as the Gary Poll theory. I believe that this theory has been being taught for quite some time now from comedians, television, and movies.
One of the best examples is the TV show The Office, American or British (My brother wrote a little something on his blog about The Office awhile back). You also have the movie Meet The Parents. Most of Brian Regan's stories. They are all funny because of all the awkwardness.
And I think that's why my life is so awesome. Its full of awkward moments. And that just gives me plenty of good stories. So, occasionally I will share these awkward stories. And they will hence be known as Gary Poll stories. I was going to share one at the end of this post, but I starting writing all this and I changed my mind. I decided that this was enough for one post. So, moral of the story. Awkwardness will always end up making for a good story.
