No Shame In Telling

Embarrassment

I was sitting here last night talking with a friend, we were sharing some of our most embarrassing moments in life and since I think in "blog mode" most of the time I thought this would be a good thing to share. For some reason I have an overwhelming need to share with the world just how stupid, clumsy and inept I can be at times.


April 1972

My graduating class band and dancers went to Washington DC to march in the Cherry Blossom Parade. It was a horrible trip there in a chartered bus with no heat. I did snag a new boyfriend on that trip though,even if it was love born from the need to stay warm. Along the way we were pulled over by state police to inform the driver his 4yr old son had just drown in their family pool. We had to wait along side the road for a replacement driver, who arrived looking like a serial killer on crack. We got there, grateful that we were not murdered by the bus driver in some rest stop along the way and checked into the hotel. I go out on the balcony to take in the view and was looking at the hotel across from us just in time to see a guy jump off the 6th floor balcony to his death. My letter jacket was stolen sometime during the night and I had to have my Mom wire me money to buy a coat with since that was the only one I had brought with me. I woke up the morning of the parade extremely sick with what I found out later was strep throat. But I was not about to miss that damn parade so I decided to march anyway. The freezing temps, ice and snow from the storm the night before and my 103 degree temp were enough to make me want to commit a crime so someone would put me in a warm jail cell for a few hours. For the parade we were not allowed to wear anything but our uniforms and as a dancer my uniform was rather skimpy. Before the parade they ask us to pose by the fountain for pictures, the photographer put all of us short ones up on the fountain ledge behind the others. He gave instructions for those on the ground to take one step back, me being sick and only paying half attention to what was going on around me only heard the "take one step back" part and not the "on the ground" part and promptly fell right into the frigid water of the fountain. There is nothing quite like embarrassing your entire school in front of the President of the US. I did not make parade queen and now understood the reason behind the balcony suicide, he just wanted out of DC as much as I did and felt that was his only choice.

Fall 1980

My son started kindergarten and came home with a list of things he needed for school. We went shopping and got everything on the list. One thing was not mentioned and I thought he might possibly might need it so I sent a note to his teacher the next morning with this written on it: "Does I Did It need to bring rubbers to school this year or do you provide them for the kindergarten students? I noticed they were not on the list and don't want him to need one and not have them." The next morning I was called to school for a conference with the principle. I had no idea what for. I tried my best to explain that where I am originally from a rubber is nothing more than an eraser. I don't think they believed me. I am also quite sure that something was lost in the translation years later while on vacation with some fairly new friends and I offered for my 17 yr old son to go by their 16 yr old daughter's room the next morning and "knock her up." The silence was deafening and I was totally innocent, I really had no idea that it had a totally different meaning here. All I meant was for him to knock on her door and wake the damn girl up for breakfast not impregnate her!

Summer 1983

The day before my wedding funeral. I might add here that I think weddings are the biggest waste of money on the planet second only to elaborate funerals, but they are kind of like the same thing so I am not sure it's fair to put each one in a single category, grouping them seems more appropriate.  It took months for me to cave in and agree to one. I participated very little in the planning, it was taking all my energy to talk myself into just showing up for the damn thing and parade myself down that aisle in front of everyone like a trained monkey. I actually spent the entire morning of my wedding funeral on the phone with my fiance trying to talk him into eloping like I did the for my first wedding funeral. If I had known then what I know now I would have been the 80's version of "The Runaway Bride" leaving only a faint dust trail in my wake. Anyway I decided to blow off some steam the night before by going bike riding with my 7 yr old son. Having been hit by a car while riding a bike when I was 9 yrs old I had a fear of bike riding and hadn't been on one since. Why I decided that was the perfect time to get back on one is a mystery. Looking back on it, maybe I was subconsciously hoping another car would hit me and I could escape the whole wedding funeral ordeal. No such luck. But I did manage to go head first into a rose bush at my Grammy's house. My wedding funeral pictures look like I had been in a cage fight the night before. I don't care what anyone tells you, there is no way to cover up that many cuts, scratches and two black eyes with make up and white is not your friend!

February 1986

First off you need to know that I usually avoid any type of confrontation. I was pregnant, this is the pregnancy that was 19 months long. The first four months of this pregnancy was spent trying to adjust to the fact that I was having identical twins and needed two of everything. How was I going to tell them apart, what if they were boys and I had to make one of them wear hot pink nail polish until he was 30 so I would know which one was which? What if they were girls and I had to sit them down and ruin their dreams by telling them they could not both have a $20,000 wedding they were going to have to flip a coin to see who the lucky winner was? I was very sick the last two months and spent most of that time in the hospital or on bed rest. I did not look my best being drained by the parasites on a daily basis. I had just came out of the hospital the day before the "incident" and was suppose to again be on bed rest. My husband came in with the mail, in it was a letter from our car insurance company informing us that we had double paid for the last three years. However,it was not accompanied by a check for that $600 overpayment. I called the office and was informed it was company policy not to give refunds for overpayment and no they would not apply it to the next three years. You just don't mess with an angry pregnant woman. I'm pretty sure that is written in blood somewhere. I got in my car and drove to the office, my husband in hot pursuit in his car as soon as he found I had left the house. I had not washed my hair in days, I was in my pajamas and had on huge English Bulldog house slippers. This little wormy looking guy came out and told us to go back into his office. He tried again to tell us they couldn't refund or credit our money back. I was supposed to just let them pocket our $600? Yeah, that wasn't going to happen. We argued back and forth for a while, me doing most of the talking. He looked over at my husband and with a smirk on his face said "Do we need to call the men in the little white coats? I think she is getting a tad upset!" Wrong thing to say, my husband said I looked like a blur climbing across that man's desk. I grabbed him by his tie and was literally choking the shit out of him screaming "You will give me my fucking money today!", his office staff threatened to call the police. I didn't even flinch at the threat, did they really think I was going to be arrested as pregnant as I was when that company already had an ongoing investigation against them for stealing other clients money? In the end they didn't call and I got my money. But by then I had turned into a power hungry bitch and refused their check, I wanted my money in cash. I have always wanted a copy of that office surveillance video of me and my big ass climbing across that desk and latching onto that little worms tie. They repeatedly refused my request.


Summer 1993

My husband and I are in Hallmark looking for a birthday card. As usual I wandered off. I decided to play a trick on him as payback for the time he came up behind me in the grocery check out and threw a hundred dollars down on the belt saying "Thanks babe, last night was good, I'll call you again the next time I am in town." and then walked out of the store like he had no idea who I was. So I stalked up one aisle and saw him standing with his back to me, I came up behind him and grabbed his balls saying "How about we have some Hallmark love in the aisle", he turned slowly around. It wasn't my husband.

Fall 1994

Texting was still relatively new at that time, dear God I really am a dinosaur! My husband and I were in the mall and I was playing with my new phone, texting back and forth with my friend. Head down not paying a bit of attention to what I was doing. I walked straight into the built in benches arranged around the fountain, lost my balance and knowing I was going to fall reached out instinctively for the nearest object to break my fall. The nearest object just happened to be a little old many waiting for his wife to finish shopping. I took him into the fountain with me. Is it any wonder I now avoid fountains? 

Christmas 1995

My husband thought Christmas should be celebrated bordello style and thus decorated our house accordingly. I really have no words to describe how horribly he decorated. I can only compare it to Santa, all the elves and the reindeer flying over our house like giant birds with diarrhea after ingesting tinsel, Christmas lights and fake snow. Let's just say we never made the Best Decorated House list at any point in our marriage. The season of 1995 was the first Christmas for my then 9 month old sons.  He decides to "bring Christmas inside" for the babies. I tried to explain that unless he was going to hang some giant milk filled boobs across the fireplace mantel then the babies couldn't care less. Undeterred he decorated and I sat by silently praying that everyone we knew would go out of town for extended vacations and not come by to see it. Then I prayed for God to help me make up a good story (we had the black plague, we had all been felled by typhus, anything, I wasn't choosy at that point) as to why those that didn't leave town could not come to the house that year. One of his "designs" was to string lights all up and down the hallway and set them on the "sequence" setting so they would fade in and out each time showing a different color. The next afternoon I am in the shower while the babies are napping, I get out still wet and naked. Out of the corner of my eye I see a flash of red in the hallway and thinking my house is on fire immediately go into mother bear fireman mode. I have to save my babies from the raging Christmas light fire! Not taking time to even throw a robe on I run into the nursery, grab the sleeping babies and run out the front door. Straight into the mailman who was delivering a package to my door. Once outside I finally realize I had no fire just stupid Christmas lights. I'm already there, wet and naked, no way to explain it so I just decided to just act normal. I smiled as if I were fully clothed and sane, signed for the package and calmly watched the poor traumatized man run back to the mail truck. He never again brought a package to my door for the next 5 years that we lived there, he always left them sitting on the trunk of my car in the driveway. Fear is a powerful emotion.

Fall 2000

Tired of wearing contact lens or glasses I decided to have vision correction surgery. Everything went fine, in and out, patches in place for a few hours. I was told I could remove the patches that night before going to bed, which I did. At some point I woke up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom. As soon as I turned the lights on in the bathroom I realized something was seriously wrong, my surgery had been a major failure and now my vision was actually worse than it was before surgery and it was really bad before surgery. I could barely see anything, it was like opening your eyes underwater in the pool, or in my case usually a fountain somewhere. I screamed and sobbed and called my doctor's emergency service. While waiting on him to call back I screamed and sobbed even louder causing mass hysteria in my house and hating myself for having the surgery. My doctor called and I hysterically told him I was blind, I would never see again and that I only had an English Bulldog and they didn't make good seeing eye dogs. I was seriously off the chain panicked. He calmly told me: "Touch your face." I suddenly realized why the surgery failed....he was an idiot who thought I had magical fingers that would restore my vision and I had let this fool do surgery on me! He then asked me: "What do you feel?" I told him: "I don't feel anything but my glasses." He replied "Exactly, now take them off, you have 20/20 vision and don't need them anymore." It was a miracle, my sight was restored by my magical fingers after all! He told me it was a common thing for patients after surgery to automatically put their glasses on in the middle of the night out of habit. I suggested that going forward he might want to write that in to his post op release papers. I mean what if I had snapped and went after him like I did the insurance man?