It is hard not to cringe at my teenage self. Sometimes this is because a photo of my unfortunate one-side-is-longer-than-the-other hair cut emerges, or I remember the time I wore silver lipstick to school, or I find my old green vinyl jacket. Other times, it is because of my affinity for PDAs.

I don’t think I was necessarily unique in this regard. Most of us girls were so excited that a boy thought we were pretty and kissable that we wanted the world to know it. Hence hickeys, and sitting in the back rows of movie theatres for make-out purposes. I squirm thinking of our parties, which would start off with us jamming out to Montel Jordan, and end up with a couple in each corner frantically sucking face.

As adults, for the most part, our PDA affinity disappears. Sure, we may jump on our partner in a random stairwell on a walk home (or maybe that’s just me), but I haven’t had the misfortune of seeing much more than a hug or brief kiss on the part of my friends these days.

What seems to have replaced the PDA as the adult version of the most awkward thing in the world to witness?

The public argument.

I firmly believe nothing is worse than watching a couple argue. Even the most epic voyeur can’t help but squirm and try to avert their eyes to something, anything, when voices start being raised and the “I can’t believe you did that” or “What do you mean I never told you this?” begin flying out.

Sunday night, my friend and I came home from a conference, and her husband came to pick us up to drive us from the U.S. airport to our Canadian city. The second he hopped out of the car door and told her his foot hurt too much that she would need to drive, it had began. I was forced to endure 4 hours of bickering. Every time I thought a tentative truce had been reached, or even some shared laughter had begun, one small comment, whether it was a comment on her driving or his choice of music, would send off a torrent of hissed statements and overgeneralized anger.

Through this all, I was perched in the backseat, trying any strategy to just make it stop. I tried all my mediational skills. I tried humour. I tried distraction. I tried extreme focus on the content of road signs. Eventually, I just rested my head against the window and cranked up my iPod to near eardrum shattering levels to block it out, ignoring the irate words that pierced the space between songs.

Quite frankly, I would have much preferred playing the alphabet game by myself while they frantically made out.

This entry was posted on Monday, February 9th, 2009 at 11:06 pm and is filed under Princess sayz, friendship, sexy times. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.