What's the dumbest thing you've ever done solely because you were too awkward to do the normal thing?

Be me, probably about 13, living in small English village, hanging out with one of my first girlfriends, totally nervous and anxious we might kiss.

Eat a pack of chewing gum before she arrives just in case, then proceed to open another pack and chew constantly like some kind of grazing animal for entirety of hang out.

Times up, didn't get a kiss but offer to walk her back to town a couple of miles down the back roads from my village.

Start walking, need to pee, tell her to wait for me whilst I hop a gate into a field and begin to relieve myself, realising I was now alone and could let out the farts I'd been holding in for hours I let one out.

Wasn't a fart. Turns out chewing gum has laxative effects in large quantities. Feel myself going bright red, think my face might melt off or heart explode.

Instead of ditching her and making an excuse and walking a couple hundred metres back to my house down the road, I instead for reasons that evade me to this day proceed to pretend nothing happened and walk backwards for 2 miles to the town scared shirtless (pun not intended) that she might see something on my jeans.

She is confused what I'm doing but goes with it. Get to town, very busy, people everywhere I'm on full on panic mode the whole time, jumpy as fuck, no one says anything though.

We get to destination and she says bye, and goes in for a kiss, at this point I just yelp "bye" and back away as fast as I can with her staring after me until I'm out of sight.

Got home, nothing was visible on my jeans and it wasn't as bad as I had thought.

Should've checked the damage, should have gone home, should have kissed the girl.

Makes me cringe to this day.

On the plus side we carried on hanging out, she never mentioned my weird behaviour and we did eventually kiss but that's another cringe story for another time!

TL;DR; Met girl, worried about first kiss, eat huge amounts of gum, go to pee, laxative effect kicks in, walk backwards 2 miles with her very confused, she goes in for kiss and I run away (backwards).

/r/AskReddit Thread