Awkward Smiley Face : l

Awkward silences.         They are pretty uncomfortable. For example, you might be working and you ask, "How's your day going?" and they respond with, "Well, I lost my job because I'm an alcoholic and my kids for the same reason. My own dog won't even look at me. Instead of barking like the rest of the dogs, mine just goes, 'Failure...Failure...'." The awkward silence that proceeds after that conversation would be quite catastrophic.

So, here are my friendly tips on how to stop awkward silences:
1) Try to have some handy conversation starters to get you going. Remember that the best way to a man's heart is through his stomach and the best way to a woman's is to talk about laundry (that second part might be a bit stereotypical but still accepted by most people).
2) Once things start to get depressing make sure to bring up rainbows. If someone says, "How much do I owe you? I probably can't pay it because my landlord just kicked me out for not being able pay the bills but I guess I can-" you can always chime in with a, "You know, I saw a rainbow today. One of the colors was the exact pure shade or your eyes." And when they say their eyes are brown, you will have a chance to bring up color-blindness as another point of conversation.
3) If you don't want to be the one to say anything, try direct eye contact. Eventually, they will feel pressured into saying something like, "Why are you staring at me, freak?" This way, they will not be thinking about how awkward the silence is. Instead, they will be thinking about the awkward person staring at them. Everyone wins.

Personally, I think that the science behind awkward silences should be taught in schools. Right next to chemistry, it would be one of the most rapidly growing fields in the nation. We could do research on how the body reacts to creepy people or the amount of tears that come out of a person when they hear bad news. I would be able to find out which ones of my bad jokes might actually make people giggle instead of just randomly typing them out. The untapped power of the awkward silence is the key to a new revolutionary breakthrough in modern technology. Save the awkward silence, save the world (that was Heroes reference, thank you).