A Field Guide to Awkward Silences Read Online Free PDF Page A

Justice I was currently sporting.
    I looked forward to calling the hotline to announce: “I have seen the man—what’s his name—the murder guy—with the bag—and the face—and I’m a tipster and a hero now!” And they would totally know who I was talking about. And they would tip off the local police department, where a rugged old sergeant with a mustache who was all but retired except he couldn’t let this one case go would sit bolt upright at his desk and he would say PARTNER, CALL THE TEAM. WE’VE GOT A REAL 3-9, and they would show up outside the dorm and surround it and take out the creepy man in handcuffs and everyone would say “What’s all this commotion? Was it really him? He seemed so quiet! We never suspected!” and I’d shrug and say, “Yeah, just a little thing I like to call Making a Difference,” and then
America’s Most Wanted
would call me up and I’d get to be on the air (but with my face obscured in case the guy came busting out later seeking vengeance) and John Walsh would shake my hand and say, “Tell me about your courage,” and I’d say, “Well, John, I havebeen watching
America’s Most Wanted
for the better part of my life, and I just knew I could make a difference.” And then I could go off somewhere and die contented, and all those nights I’d spent watching
America’s Most Wanted
instead of familiarizing myself with nineties culture like everyone else wouldn’t have been a big old waste because I’d brought CLOSURE to a FAMILY.
    All this in my mind.
    •   •   •
    But as I followed my suspect into what I realized with horror was my dorm’s cafeteria it struck me that maybe calling in and saying, “I have the guy, the murder guy, with the bag,” might not be maybe exactly a hundred percent the best idea of all time. Maybe I should get the name, just so I wouldn’t sound like an idiot on what was sure to be the first of many lifesaving calls.
    When I got to the cafeteria, my friends were no help. I nudged them, trying to avoid drawing attention.
    “Doesn’t that guy there look like the murder bag guy on that recent episode of
America’s Most Wanted
?”
    “Dude,” they said, “A, no one watches that but you. B, no one watches that but you. No one. And C, that’s the prelaw tutor.”
    “No,” I said. “No, that’s a lie, that’s a falsehood, that’s an alias! I’m going to go look this up on AMW.com, and you are going to see who is vindicated and who is not. Keep a visual on him.”
    I rose in a blaze of glory and climbed the stairs to my laptop to visit the AMW Web site and try to find the actual name of this Wanted Felon.
    I found his name, all right.
    I found the picture. I found the details of the case—the bag, the daughter. And he did look just like I remembered.
    There was only one problem.
    The crime had happened in 1970. It was unlikely he looked exactly the same thirty years later, unless of course he were some kind of warlock, in which case we had a much bigger problem on our hands.
    So that was awkward.
    •   •   •
    You begin to see the pattern.
    Every time I thought I was out, I was only dragging myself deeper in.
    But maybe that was all right.
    It was one thing to have people around you staring and murmuring and pointing at you. It was another to throw yourself into the awkwardness, wholeheartedly, and see where you could get.
    If you leaped into it with both feet, arms flailing wildly, you were invincible, like someone in a video game who had stepped on one of those flashing stars.
    But I hadn’t quite figured that out yet.
    •   •   •
    I couldn’t keep away the nagging sense that all this would have gone so much better if someone else had been writing it. I had more experience with books than people. And when people in books did things like this, they always turned out a little bit better. Logan Pearsall Smith said, “People say that life is the thing, but I prefer reading.” Logan Pearsall Smith was onto