Monday, March 2, 2009

This could only happen to me

I'm sure everyone has experienced this: you did something embarrassing in public and just wanted to crawl under a rock. The first thing you always do is immediately look around to see if anyone noticed, breathing a sigh of relief if not or blushing and shrugging if it was noticed.

Well, yesterday I did something so incredibly stupid and humiliating in the parking lot of No Frills, I just wanted to go hide somewhere. And of course, with my luck, it was definitely noticed. I had just finished loading all the groceries into the back of the Durango. I reached up and grabbed the back hatch, and swung it downwards with all my might. And wouldn't you know it, I had misjudged the distance I was standing from the vehicle and !!!SMASH!!! The sharp bottom corner landed directly on top of my head.

Holy CRAP did it hurt! I yelped loudly and grabbed my poor head. Then, of course, I whipped around to see if there were witnesses and sure enough, there were like four people walking to their vehicles who had stopped upon seeing this and they were all wincing and looking sorry for me. One guy said, "Yeouch! That's gotta hurt!" Brilliant observation, buddy. I smiled weakly and replied, "Yeah, you'd think I was blonde or something." Only to realize two of the four people watching were blondes, of course! Returning my cart to the rack was like doing a walk of shame. I could just imagine how stupid those people thought I was. Doh!

Today, the ginormous goose-egg on top of my head gave my head this lovely misshapen bulge, I looked like an inbred hillbilly. Had to wear a hat to Lena's gymnastics to cover my oddity. At least I was able to find one of those boxy military-looking hats that aren't formfitting to your head, like a ball cap is.

So, in the spirit of self-humiliation, I've compiled a list for y'all of the many many embarrassing things I've done over the years. Should give you quite a laugh. Me, not so much.

(These are not in any order of most-to-least embarrassing, I'm just writing them down as they come to my swollen, misshapen head.)
  1. When I was about 13-14, I went bowling with Christine in Red Deer. This was during my long-skirt-brightly-colored-tights-combat-boots-wearing days. Yes, I thought this was quite a look. Anyways, the skirt I had on was floor length and about three sizes too big, but I loved it and usually just used a big safety pin to tighten the waist. On that particular day, my big pin was missing so I thought Oh well, what's the likelihood my skirt will fall down? Ahhh, the naivety of youth. So we're at the bowling alley, just the two of us, and the next lane over is a bunch of teenagers a few years older than us, with about half of them being hot guys. Of course, me and Christine were goofing off, trying to attract their attention. I grabbed my ball and stepped up to take my swing. I could feel a breeze on my legs but I was into my swing, watching the ball, and so thought nothing of it. Then I heard Christine gasp loudly and as I swung around to look at her, my legs got tangled in something. Yeah, you know where this is going. My friggin' skirt was down around my ankles, leaving me clad in nothing but a little t-shirt, bright red tights and those incredibly ugly bowling shoes! I had my skirt yanked back up in a flash, but I knew, I KNEW, that those guys had seen everything. My face was as red as my tights. Dared a glance over at the guys, who were all grinning hugely at me and laughing. Looked at Chris, she looked at me, and we both nodded. Right. Bowling was officially over. We hightailed it out of there and didn't look back. To commemorate this humiliating occasion, my dad bought me a figurine of a mouse holding a bowling ball. Thanks, Dad!
  2. In grade five one time, a bunch of us kids were goofing off in class as the teacher had left the room. For some reason, I thought it would be funny to jump on top of a desk. Don't ask me why. Of course, the desk toppled over, I fell backwards and landed sprawled on top of it. The kids were laughing hilariously (well, at least I got the laughs I was looking for) and one kid, what an ass, pipes up, "Must be because she's chubby!" Ooooo, now that's just mean! I had never considered myself to be a chubby kid until that point. Talk about adding insult to injury, literally.
  3. It was first day of grade four, the morning, and everyone had just finished putting away the school supplies in our desks. The teacher asked us to get out a pencil and notebook. I slid down in my seat to reach into my desk, and as I did a little fart squeaked out. I snapped upright and looked at the kid next to me. I could tell he was about to say something, he just had that look on his face. To head him off at the pass, and serve him right for being about to rat on me, I said loudly, "Ewwww, Allan!" He turned bright red and sputtered, "It wasn't me!" and everyone just laughed. (Yeah, so maybe you don't consider this to be an embarrassing moment for me, you probably feel bad for Allan, but it stands out in my memory as one of my more humiliating moments.)
  4. One time in junior high, I got in trouble from the teacher, who also happened to be the junior high principal. He left the room and I decided to get a little revenge by standing in front of the class, back to the door, and imitate him. "Blabbedy-blah Beau, you get detention, I'm the principal, blabbedy-blah" in a deep voice like his. Everyone was laughing hysterically, then suddenly there was silence. I, of course, was so into my impression that I didn't notice and kept on with the impression. Finally, it penetrated my peabrain and I turned around and of course there he was, standing behind me. Needless to say, I got about another weeks' worth of detention for that one, as well as being the laughingstock of the class and having them doing impressions of ME for the next month.
  5. It was wintertime and I was in grade 10. You know, the grade when you feel superior to all the junior high kids but you are still trying to impress the older ones and want them to think you're cool. So I was outside the school, walking on the sidewalk, and I was wearing a skirt, nylons and shoes with a bit of a heel. There was a huge group of senior high kids standing in the "pit" (where they went to smoke during breaks) and I was walking by them, trying to look cool. Just as I was about past the group, my ankle twisted inwards and I stumbled, then my shoes slipped on the ice. I went down, hard, in a flurry of arms and legs, and ended up sprawled spread-eagled on the sidewalk, skirt up around my hips. I could hear hoots and catcalls and crazy laughter. I scrambled to stand up and fled inside the school. Had to ditch my shredded nylons in the garbage and walk around all day with bare, scraped-up legs. By the end of the day, everyone had heard what'd happened and they all called me "Blue" because of the blue panties I flashed when I was on the ground.
  6. If you have a weak stomach, avoid this one! It must have been in grade 9 or 10. I was at my friend Jodie's house, there was a big party going on, and her two older brothers were there as well as all their wayyyy hot friends. Jodie convinced me to drink a couple of beers, my first time drinking beer ever. I absolutely hated the taste but didn't want to look 'uncool' so I downed them quickly. BIIIIIIGGGG mistake. I was sitting on the couch between Jodie and her older brother, when suddenly my stomach started rebelling against all the yeasty beer. I kept swallowing frantically, trying to stop what I knew what going on, when all of a sudden it happened. I cupped my hands to my mouth to hold the puke in, but all that did was force the puke into a high arc in the air, like a fountain. SPLASH! All over the coffee table in front of us, all over myself, the couch. Puke was dripping off the table onto the floor. I burst into tears and Jodie hustled me out of there as fast as she could, upstairs to the shower, but all I could hear was all the guys in the livingroom yelling, "Did you SEE that?! That was the coolest thing ever! It was a fuckin' fountain! AWESOME!" It would have been MUCH worse if they were all like 'gross!' but still.... And that is how I earned the nickname "Spew" that stuck with me right up till graduation.
  7. Here's another one for all you squeamish types to avoid. This happened when I was in my just-graduated-out-of-the-house-wild-child days (before I was together with Tyler). Took home a guy from the bar with the intent on having a crazy-fun time, and I got my period, well, during the fun time. Yes, d-u-r-i-n-g. I won't get into any horrific details here, but suffice it to say we were both extremely traumatized (him probably more than me, haha) and I never saw the guy again.
  8. One time during me and Tyler's early days as a couple, I was sitting on his lap, we were watching tv, and at a commercial break he started tickling me. I was laughing hysterically, trying to escape, and I accidentally farted on his lap. He was horrified, as was I, but I couldn't stop laughing at the look on his face, and everytime I laughed, another one came out. Then it was him trying to escape me, and all I could do was lay on the couch, laughing my head off even as I blushed fiery-red with embarrassment. Nothing like doing that "first" (you know, the first time you fart in front of your significant other) while sitting on your guy's lap. He later told me that was the first time he ever heard a girl fart, up until then he wasn't even sure we did that. Oh, Tyler, so street-wise and yet so naive, haha...
  9. I was in grade 12, the senior high school had just been renovated, and I was sitting in the new common area doing homework, listening to music on my walkman. Out of the corner of my eye I could see some girls at another table laughing and sneaking glances at me. When I turned my head to stare at them, they stopped and looked down at their books. Went back to doing my thing, and noticed this time some guys at a different table doing the same thing. It was at that point that I realized I had been singing along to the music, loudly. I'm pretty sure the entire school had heard my warbling, off-key singing as it echoed throughout the huge common area and down the halls. Its a good thing I was popular and generally well-liked by all, so when people made fun of me afterwards it was more of a "That Beau, what a nut" instead of "That Beau, what a loser". Haha.
  10. As some of you may already know, I was hugely addicted to Harlequin romance novels when I was a young teen. Well, one time I was in the middle of reading one and my dad happened by and snatched the book out of my hand. I immediately went nuts, trying to get it back before he glanced at the page. Dad being Dad, he picked up on the frantic vibe and opened the book and started reading aloud. And of course, he had to zero in on the few graphic paragraphs of the love scene. You know what's worse than watching a movie with your parents and a love scene comes on and everyone sort of sits uncomfortably through it and avoids looking at each other? Having your DAD read a graphic love scene out loud and hearing him say words like "thrust" and "manhood" and "breasts". After that, I learned to read those books in the privacy of my room.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

OMG, I have never laughed so hard, Sax. I literally cried with laughter over some of these entries and people coming in/out of the office think I'm a nut. You are absolutely hilarious. This was a good read, definitely a posting I'll return to!

Mom

Anonymous said...

This is how funny our "embarrasing moments" are...we remember them with exact clarity and humiliation...but those that were with us hardly remember! For instance, I have ABSOLUTELY NO RECOLLECTION of the said bowling incident. Isn't that weird???