>The Awkward Moments of BlogHer

>I’ll remember BlogHer ’09 for a lot of reasons

But mostly for the awkward.

No matter how hard I tried to be good, I kept finding myself caught in completely embarrassing situations, things that weren’t at all funny at the time… but sort of are now.

At one point, I went late to a panel discussion that was completely full. I opened the door, walked in, and immediately tripped over a woman sitting on the floor. She looked up at me and I recognized her.

“Oh, I’m sorry Jory!” I whispered loudly. But right as the word, ‘Jory,’ came out of my mouth, I realized it wasn’t Jory at all. It was her twin sister, a woman I knew only as ‘The Feminist Scholar.’

As I stood there poised over her body, I couldn’t think of the right way to fix my mistake. I wanted to say, “I mean, I know you’re not Jory. But I don’t know your name. I just call you the Feminist Scholar.”

But that didn’t sound right, and there was a panel discussion going on for heaven’s sake, and hadn’t I done enough damage? So I ended up just staring at her openmouthed for a few seconds and then going on my way.

AWKWARD.

But the most awkward experience happened on Thursday night, when a friend introduced me to someone with whom I’d gotten into a very minor online brouhaha earlier this year (and no, I’m not naming names).

“Hello,” she said, after we’d been introduced. She looked at me pointedly. “I believe you linked to me several times on your blog.”

I kept smiling. “Oh yes,” I laughed politely. “I believe you linked to me, too.”

Her face was grave. “No I didn’t,” she said. I was confused. She totally did link to me! I paused for a moment as she stared at me, stone faced.

“No I didn’t,” I said finally, still smiling.

We both just stood there staring for a moment, and then I said something like, “Well, bye,” and walked away.

“What was that about?” my friend asked me later.

“I don’t know,” I said. “I thought it might be a good defense strategy to just repeat whatever she said, while smiling. But it totally didn’t work!”

We both started laughing helplessly.

As embarrassing as this moment was for me, I feel compelled to tell you about it now so that you won’t make the same mistake. When someone is arguing with you, don’t, and I mean don’t repeat everything they say back to them while smiling.

It totally doesn’t work.

This post originally appeared on Parents.com.