"Shotgun Wedding"

AKA: Aaaaaaawkward...

I was sitting in the staff room recently, chatting with my neighboring teachers, when my birthday came up in conversation. I moaned and said, "24? I'm going to be Christmas Cake soon!"

In Japan, it is a tradition to eat "Christmas Cake" on or before Christmas - I like to call it " 'Happy Birthday, Jesus!' cake", as it's basically the same as a birthday cake, but with a variety of Christmas-themed decorations instead of birthday ones. In the Japanese mind, eating Christmas Cake is law; the idea of skipping out on this tradition is, simply put, an act against nature.

How does this relate to my age? In Japan, a single woman of or around the age of 25 can be granted this title. A woman explained it to me as thus: "Christmas Cake sells for full price until the 24th; it goes at half-price on the 25th, and then down from there." In other words: If you're not married by 25, you get put on the sale rack.
It's an awful saying that I've embraced as my own; it's so terrible that I have to laugh at it as often as possible.

So, back to the staff room and my conversation with my teachers. After my bemoaning an impending "Christmas Cake" label, one of my teachers revealed that she married at 23. I looked stunned, and she said, "It was an accident."

My mind reeled. The Southern woman in me screamed in horror at the sheer number of faux pas waiting to happen from this. Of course, in this panicked status, I did the smart thing (/sarcasm) and decided to reveal a great Southernism: "shotgun wedding."

Don't ask me why I thought it was a good idea at the time - maybe I was assuming that she meant "mistake" instead of "accident." In any case, I explain the principle behind a shotgun wedding - a man is forced, at the end of a shotgun, to marry a woman whom he has impregnated. As I explained, my teacher was nodding, and when I finished, she said, "So, so, so, so, so" in quick succession, the Japanese equivalent of "Yeah! Yeah, that!"

. . .

I still have only one response to this, and that response is: "AWKWARD!"