What is your most embarrassing moment has been a game that we’ve played in my family for as long as I can remember. A tradition we’ve upheld since my mom told us about the time she lost her underwear at K-Mart. You see, she had recently lost a bunch of weight and nothing fit. Where else does the stylish woman on a budget shop but good old friendly K-Mart? When she entered the store everything felt fairly snug, but after a few hours of strenuous shopping things had changed. She walked out of the store holding my sister on one hip and me on the other with a giant bag full of new clothes balanced over each elbow. The car was parked very far from the entrance and as she walked through the crowded parking lot she could feel her panties slipping down under her skirt. Each heavy step bringing them lower and lower until unable to yank them up she just let them fall where they fell in the middle of the lane. Then with as much dignity as possible she simply stepped right out of those nickers and just kept right on walking, never looking back.
We all Have them. Those horrible moments that we can’t turn off. In times of weakness they come to plague us like a bad eighties tune you just can’t get out of your head. Maybe they exist to humble us for some unimaginable sin we may have inflicted on the world? Perhaps, it was those thumbtacks you put under the dining room rug so that your sweet good natured sister would step on them while she set the table or maybe you once stole your dads car and left him on top of a mountain for an entire day so you could hang out with your friends. Who knows why, when, or how? All we really know is that they exist and they are down right nasty in a mean Joan Rivers doesn’t like my dress sort of way.
My evil sister, the same one who so meticulously placed those thumbtacks, and I have kept the tradition alive over the years and while I’m not quite yet ready to tell you my most embarrassing secret I will gladly tell you hers.
It was the evening of the big Mormon dance and everyone who was anyone was going. Truthfully I don’t really know why we were even going since we weren’t Mormon and I think we only knew one girl, but hey don’t you know Mormon dances play the best music (ya I had no idea either). It was the era of modern rock and we dressed up in our best clothes. Shannon aka evil sister wore a vintage black baby doll dress over fishnets with thigh high leggings (who cares that it was August, the weekend before school started, and a hundred degrees outside, but the layered look suited her perfectly and really set off her bold kohl eye liner and fake tattoos. She was looking killer. Joan Rivers eat your heart out.
I was sporting the look as well. White tights, and only tights, no skirt no pants nothing else were paired with the super sexy white pirate shirt I’d bought from Contempo Casuals that very afternoon and not to be remiss was the lacy black bra that peek-a-booed out of the open pirate collar accentuating something that I was way to young to be showing. (I was fifteen. I think that you should be at least 85 and senile before you are allowed to be seen in public in your underwear.
(Did my dad not see what I was wearing? I’m so glad I didn’t have girls).
As you can imagine we were styling in every way.
My sister, our friend Layla (her name has been changed for legal purposes) and I had spent the majority of the afternoon before the dance in San Francisco. We decided that since we were all high-school bound now that we needed some practice in the guy department. We made a pact that we would all walk up to at least one perfect stranger and try out our best pick-up lines on them. (Yes, this is what three stupid 13, 14, and 15 year old girls do on a Saturday afternoon the weekend before school starts.)
Layla, being the much more brazen of the three, and I can easily say that since her name has been changed for legal purposes that this was all her idea, went first. She chose an older street vendor selling pretzels and asked him “If I where older would you date me?” to which he replied “I only sell stuff sweetie, I ain’t buyin’.” To which we all ran in fear and laughter down Polk street past the prostitutes and bums and caught a quick cablecar back to the mall on Market st.
We had all begun to lose our nerve after the pretzel guy incident, but Layla was mad and kept telling us she’d never talk to us again if we didn’t do it too. Shannon (no need to change her name for legal purposes) planning to keep it cool sauntered up to a boy about our own age and asked him for a cigarette and a light. He gladly handed her a smoke and as she held the Marlboro out toward his Zippo he said “Um, you need to hold it up to your mouth and suck in hon.” So much for the sauve delivery, but much better than pretzel guy.
I was last and super shy and suffice it to say I pretended to flirt with someone in Wherehouse records, but really I just asked him if he knew where the bathroom was so I could be off the hook.
As the three of us got dressed in our stunning ensambles for the dance we decided that we really needed to continue our practicing on those nice Mormon boys. We had all done so well during the afternoon we figured that the dance would be a cinch and that we’d all leave that night with glamorous new boyfriends to start the school year off with.
The dance was crowded with lots of alternative dressers like ourselves. Boys with black nail polish and pink lipstick had us drooling at every turn. And, then she spotted him. My evil little sister had found her mark. Tall and lanky with curly black hair and a black hoody. What more could a girl ask for?
Huddling in football pregame fashion we gave Shannon our best encouragement.
“He’s cute, but you’re much cooler.”
“This is nothing you smoked a cigarette today.”
“Just do it.” (I think Nike stole that from us.)
So with those words of wisdom Shannon, my ultra evil sibling, charged up to that cute boy like a woman on a mission.
“Hi”, she said. “You know, you look EXACTLY like a character in this book that I’m reading.”
He laughed. “Really? And how EXACTLY is that possible?
“Uh, I have no idea.” she stammered utterly mortified.
And, with that the woman on a mission ran and insisted we leave the dance immediately.
The utterly mortifying thing is that the next Monday at orientation this same cute boy ended up being the student body president. At the end of the day he walked up to her and asked her if she’d read any good books lately and even though they briefly dated for three days that first week of school she has yet to get over the utter humiliation of those fourteen little words.
I guess I’m feeling a little more comfortable now and I think that it may be time to let you in on my embarrassing moment. For although I’ve experienced many I seem to have lost most of the embarrassment factor. Like the one time I fell down in the middle of the road on the way to pick up my car from the mechanic and the only one who saw me was a little doggy who came and licked my face trying to comfort me. It’s like the tree thing. If no one is there did it really happen? And, why in the heck is falling down so humiliating. Did our parents infuse in us some kind of notion that only assholes fall down when we were learning to walk or something. I mean who hasn’t fallen in their life. No one, that’s right no one. It should be no more embarrassing than farting or burping, but oh ya those are embarrassing too.
I would like to tell you about this time in Berkeley that I ran out of a Vietnamese restaurant with my skirt tucked into my underwear, but alas I think the karma I have for stealing my dads car is much more severe. For although that was pretty embarrassing in the moment the humiliation hasn’t lingered.
Caution. What I’m about to tell you is not for the faint of heart, and please don’t tell you’re friends or neighbors. I really don’t want to be the girl that everyone points and snickers out in the middle of Safeway. So please out of respect, keep it to yourself.
It was a lazy fall afternoon and my OCD was getting the best of me. We had just rented a beautiful home in the middle of nowhere. The large gray two story was truly my dream house. I used to gaze at it as they were building it and imagine living there. The house had so many windows it could have been made of glass and because it was brand spanking new there wasn’t a curtain or blind on a single one of them.
Whenever I’m bored my OCD begins to eat me alive. What can I alphabetize? what needs cleaning, dusting, perfecting, etc. Well on this day my brain was shouting the car the car like Tattoo on Fantasy Island. My son was two at the time so off I went baby in hand down the long sloping driveway to wash the darn car and I don’t mean spray the car with water and be done. I mean toothbrush in every crevice and shampooing the upholstery. I can be ridiculous, but at least my car is clean.
After about an hour of “car perfecting” I figured I was done and I was feeling filthy. I think I had a little speck of dirt under my fingernail so of course I needed an entire shower. I hauled the baby back into the house (thankfully he loves to clean too. He’s been organizing his diapers since birth.)
I threw my clothes in the washer and was just about to step into the shower when my son came in and with little sad nearly weepy eyes asked for some milk. I figured that after an hour of car cleaning he was definitely owed some refreshment so off I went nude as newborn into the kitchen to get a sippy.
BAM...BAM...BAM...
The next thing I knew I turned to see my landlord tapping on my glass window and waving wildly. I screamed my head off. I was naked! Couldn’t he see I was naked? His mustached face was simply smiling stalker like as I screamed. This wasn’t cute naked or sexy naked. This was chubby momma I have dirt under my fingernail naked. The worst part was I had just thrown everything in the washer so I had to walk with as much poise as I could through an almost glass house up a winding staircase into my bedroom so I could grab something anything to put on my body and all the while this crazy mustached landlord just kept waving and smiling and laughing. It was horrible.
When I finally was able to grab my robe and come back down. All he said was.
“How are you doing? I just wanted to make sure everything was going smoothly.”
Honestly, I could have died standing there with for all intensive purposes a perfect stranger while he continued to make idle chit-chat. Looking back, I’m sure he was just as embarrassed as I was - well maybe not.
I’m sure a lot of you out there have moments that are even more embarrassing than mine or maybe yours is a just as sweet and cute as Shannon’s. Suffice it to say we’ve all lost our dignity or our underwear somewhere along this little path of life. So don’t be humiliated, embrace it. Those moments are what map out our humanity and keep us humble.
So I told you mine. what’s yours?
