One thing that I decided when I started college was that I was going to try my very best to come across as normal. So far, this doesn’t seem to be working out for me. I keep embarrassing myself.

An example of this would be yesterday, when my friend Ime and a girl I didn’t know were talking in German to each other in the library. They were sitting across the table from where I was working, and I glanced up at them a couple of times. One of the times, I met the eyes of the girl I didn’t know and then – being the paranoid person that I am – I suddenly thought she probably thought that I was getting irritated with their talking (they didn’t stop talking or lower their voices or anything though, so I don’t know why I thought this). So, to make the rude thing I had done but not done better I decided that I would compliment them on their speaking, because the German was really fluent and good. Getting up the courage to do this took me ages though, so it just occurred to me I was probably staring for a while before I said anything. Basically I just said they were both really good at German and the fluency was great etc and then kind of expected them to smile or something and not think I was a horrible eggy person.
What actually happened was that Ime sort of half smiled at me and the girl I didn’t know gave me a funny look. I thought this was pretty weird, since I’d just tried to be nice so I concentrated on my work and didn’t look at them again for the rest of the session.

Today, I walked past the girl I didn’t know and heard her speaking English…

She’s German.

Track: You Don't Know Me - Ben Folds feat Regina Spektor