It’s funny how your “most embarrassing moment” can be the topic of conversation. Isn’t it bad enough that it already happened once? Do we need to drudge up the pain and humiliation all over again in the middle of an otherwise lovely conversation?
APPARENTLY. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have a blogpost this morning.
Maybe there’s something cathartic in telling a bunch of friends all about that time you wished you were dead. “TAKE THAT, embarrassment! I’m totally laughing AT you and not with you, the same way that cafeteria full of strangers laughed at me that day twenty years ago!” But, overachiever that I am, I’m not just laughing with friends. I’m laughing with the entire universe aka the internet. SEE, humiliation? That which didn’t kill me made me an oversharer!
I have two moments that I consider my “most embarrassing.” I’ve always been lucky that way. Life deals with me generously, in embarrassing moments as well as unexpected layoffs.
The first of the “most embarrassings” was when I was in second grade.
We had a picnic. Only, it was an “indoor picnic,” which in retrospect seems to me the least fun picnic idea ever imagined. A picnic minus the outside? I call that lunch. And, well, yes. Okay, I find lunch to be rather exciting. But, to call eating at your desk a “picnic” just seems to me false advertising.
This indoor picnic was sort of a big deal, and I was wearing a poofy, fluffy dress (and looking adorable, if you must know). But, right before picnic fun began, the teacher asked, “Does anyone need to use the bathroom?”
Being both a second grader and Liz, I was really embarrassed admitting that I had, you know, a normally functioning digestive tract. At eight, my singular goal in life was for no one to ever know that I did anything as embarrassing as use the bathroom. I juggled the idea in my head, should I admit to needing to pee, or risk making a puddle on the floor? before letting my hand timidly raise.
No one else’s did.
“Alright Elizabeth, go to the bathroom. We’ll wait til you get back.”
NO PRESSURE OR ANYTHING. Everyone’s just waiting for this indoor picnic fun to begin, but you know, take your time PEEING, as if that’s not gross and weird enough.
So, I ran, my little maryjanes clicking down the hall, spun into the bathroom, and handled my delicate business quickly. The only thing more embarrassing than needing to pee might be needing to acknowledge that necessity to an entire room of immature eight year olds. And the only thing worse than that is when they’re all waiting for you to finish, already, so they can start with that insane picnic partay.
I hurriedly washed my hands (hygiene, people), and ran back down the hall to class.
As I entered the room, the entire class burst into laughter, including the teacher.
My fluffy, special indoor-picnic skirt was tucked into the front of my little girl undies.
TOP IT, I DARE YOU. What was your most embarrassing moment?
(Maybe I’ll even share Most Embarrassing Moment Number Two with you since this was clearly Number One, PUN INTENDED.)
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Sep 17, 2012 1:30 am
Setting the scene: The first time I met my boyfriend’s grandmother was at Thanksgicing dinner with his entire family. She has, what went undiagnosed at the time, early stages of Alzheimer’s disease, which meant that she was more than just her natural amount of cranky and extra unfiltered. Also, I have a generous rack. So, his ENTIRE extended family, her mouth & my rack. Go!
Ryan: “Grandma Ginny, this is my girlfriend Mariela.”
Mariela: “Hi, it’s so nice to finally meet you!”
Ginny: “Wow Ryan, you never mentioned her huge tits! (to me) You’ll have no trouble breast feeding someday…”
The end.
Sep 17, 2012 7:43 am
jaw. on. floor.
Which also reminds me of a terrible, but not totally embarrassing thing – having my grandfather slap my ass while in advanced Alzheimer’s because he thought i was a nurse.
Actually now that I think of it, my most embarrassing moment also involved the same grandfather AND boobs. I was 12 and swimming in the Pacific for the first time, on the beach at the Hotel Del Coronado (where Some Like it Hot was filmed!) – anyway, I was caught in the undertow and couldn’t figure out which way was up, swam and hit the bottom, finally found my way to the surface as I thought I was going to die – and stood up with no bathing suit top, with my overdeveloped 12 year old knockers, right in front of my grandparents – including my uber traditional, super WASP-y grandmother. I still feel mortified thinking about it, and they’re both dead.
Sep 17, 2012 1:54 pm
So, we were at Donnie’s sister’s rehearsal dinner. Her fiance’s grandmother was there and she’s just the kind of fiesty lady that I love and hope to be like someday. Well, I met her (Grandma Liz) and gave her a hug, and she told me, in her very first breath, that I had very nice bosoms and they filled my dress out well. Not shocking me one bit, I stood up and told her thank you, and said, well, it balances out the fact that I have no butt! Her response? She smacked my butt, and said, in front of the whole table, “No no, dear, you have a very nice ass. It’s quite firm.”
Thanks Grandma Liz. :)
Sep 18, 2012 10:19 am
I will be Grandma Liz one day.
Sep 17, 2012 3:06 pm
A member of Josh’s family honked my boob. I think Josh was more embarrassed than I was. It was a conversation about bras or something so I was like, “Of course she’d grab my boob!” while he withered and died.
Sep 17, 2012 1:22 pm
That KY “warming liquid”? It might surprisingly feel like FIRE and cause you to run down the hall nude past your boyfriend at the time’s roommates to get to the shower to run cold water over things. On Valentine’s Day.
I’m just saying it’s POSSIBLE.
Sep 17, 2012 3:07 pm
Hahaha, keeping that snippet of info tucked away.
Sep 17, 2012 3:09 pm
No one else I know has had that experience with the stuff.
Sep 17, 2012 3:12 pm
I did! It was terrible, and also gave me a yeast infection. The worst!
Sep 17, 2012 3:17 pm
Someone warned me like, the day after it came out. I have been forever grateful to her.
Sep 17, 2012 3:27 pm
I’ve had that reaction to the non-warming kind, so I’m not incredibly surprised.
Sep 18, 2012 9:29 am
YES! Oh my goodness. That was sort of not enjoyable at all.
Sep 17, 2012 1:30 pm
Mine is similar to yours, but … kind of worse?
I was a terribly polite kid, and when I was in first grade, I had just gone up to the teacher on duty at recess to ask to go to the restroom when they blew the whistle for us to line up and go back inside. I held it all the way down the hall to my classroom, intending to ask my teacher for permission as soon as we got back. Unfortunately, there was no opportunity to do this without interrupting because she immediately called us to work on math while sitting in a circle on the floor I raised my hand, but before she had time to call on me, I realized it was too late. I would never make it. I jumped up and ran to the bathroom (which was inside the classroom). I managed to make it to the toilet and pulled down my pants and underwear, but didn’t get to sit down before I peed ALL OVER THE FLOOR and my pants. Of course, my teacher was startled when I jumped up, so she — and therefore, the whole class — followed me to the bathroom and stood in the doorway to witness the whole thing. I bawled my eyes out.
AWESOME.
Sep 17, 2012 1:41 pm
Kind of similar to this AND the original post – I was too polite to say the WORDS bathroom, restroom, etc. (Also I didn’t know the word “restroom” when I first went to school because my parents had never used it, so I thought it must be some sort of lounge and of COURSE I don’t need to go to a fcking lounge, I’m 5 for crissakes.)
So. Wouldn’t ask to go to the bathroom. Had to go to the bathroom. Peed myself. In the middle of class. Teacher called the janitor who looked like he belonged on a jar of pasta sauce. Receding hairline. Huge. Handlebar moustache. He SAT ME ON HIS STOMACH, with one arm around me, mopped with the other arm, while all the kids (who had met me THAT DAY) stared up at me from their tiny kindergardener chairs. It was terrible.
And this wasn’t even the last time. Some variation of Ceej-wet-herself happened like once a week for YEARS. Holding it in unnecessarily eventually led to a UTI (which wasn’t diagnosed because I didn’t know what was up and was too embarrassed to ask) which led to a kidney infection when I was 7. And then a bladder infection when I was 8.
I’m not going to instill a love of potty humor and crude terminology in my kids but BY GAWD they WILL feel comfortable addressing their bodies’ needs. Ugh!!!
Sep 17, 2012 3:09 pm
You guys are my kindred spirits.
Sep 17, 2012 3:33 pm
The only embarrassing story I’ve allowed myself to remember involves peeing on the floor in kindergarten because my teacher wouldn’t let me leave until she finished reading the book the ONLY time I ever asked to use the bathroom in kindergarten. Stood up, it was too late…
Years later, I was back in the school to vote for the first time since I was there as a 5 year old. Sure enough, the carpet was still there. So was my stain.
Sep 17, 2012 3:34 pm
AW hahahaha “my stain.”
Teachers are cruel, man.
Sep 17, 2012 1:32 pm
Well, this doesn’t count since I already wrote about it, but I discussed the time that I peed my pants in front of my friend’s dad when I was 7 years old on the blog here: http://fromasmallstep.blogspot.com/2011/02/confessions.html
I’ll keep thinking to find more things. I am sure there are hundreds. At least.
Sep 17, 2012 3:12 pm
This happened to me! Only I was 18. And in college. And my new, still-sort-of-a-stranger roommate is the one who was there. I WAS A GROWN LADY.
Sep 17, 2012 1:39 pm
Wow, this is like reading Trauma-Rama from Seventeen magazine when I was in middle school.
Okay, I guess I’m owning up to one of my most embarrassing experiences ever. It’s really not that bad, but…
I’m half-Japanese, half-American and every summer my parents would take my sister and me to Japan. There’s a very normal activity in Japan — everyone goes to the public baths. So me, in like… elementary school, went to the on-sen (as they are called) with my family.
Another thing about Japan: their restrooms are different. Traditional Japanese toilets are on the floor and you squat down to use it (picture: http://www.japan-guide.com/g4/2003_02.jpg) So the toilet stall doors go all the way down to the floor. This is important.
On this auspicious day, I was at the on-sen in the ladies’ side, naked as a jaybird, and decided to pee before I went into the baths. I went into the toilets, locked myself into a stall, and did my business. But the door WOULDN’T UNLOCK. I was trapped in this public toilet stall and had it been an American stall I would’ve slipped out from under it (as we do) with not a care in the world, but since the door went down to the floor I was in this tiny cubicle and I imagined I would die in there.
Cue me, freaking out, crying, screaming, in English (yes I’m bilingual, but in my panic I reverted to my mother tongue), banging on the door, just going nuts. My sister tried to talk me through it on the other side, but the door was seriously jammed. My grandmother was trying to help me too, but there was nothing she could do. They had to call for a worker to open the door.
I’d probably been in there only 10 minutes by the time the door jimmied itself out of the jam. The stall door flew open and a MAN caught me. The only worker they could find was a male, I guess. So a middle-aged man caught my little prepubescent naked body, I was all full of snot and tears, and surrounding us in the bathroom was my naked family, and a bunch of other old nude ladies watching the commotion. I wanted the earth to swallow me whole.
I hope that was embarrassing enough for you. And yes, this is 100% true.
Sep 17, 2012 3:13 pm
Elissa! This would’ve traumatized me!
Sep 17, 2012 3:07 pm
I have soooo many. Like, how I met my husband. Or, the time I danced with a boy I liked in junior high and got THE SHAKES so hard that he thought I was maybe having a seizure. Or, the time my husband’s best friend walked in on him, ahem, being a generous lover to me on our living room floor. Or yesterday, when we started to do it with the doors to our balcony open and our neighbor (who has an immediately adjacent balcony) LOUDLY CLEARED HER THROAT so we knew to quiet down.
But honestly I think the time I was most, “EARTH, PLEASE JUST SWALLOW ME” was when an ex, after a very awkward night of socializing within the same sphere of each other for one of the first times years after our terrible breakup, called me to set up a catch-up/overdue apology coffee, but I answered my phone without looking at the caller ID, assuming it was Collin because WHO ELSE WOULD BE CALLING ME AFTER 2:00AM? I answered, “hey my super cuun sweet love!” or something similarly schmoopy and the dude awkwardly said, “Hey, it’s [Ex dude]” Oh god. So awkward. I’m cringing right now.
Sep 17, 2012 3:15 pm
Robin! I hadn’t read about how you met your husband hahaha. Have you managed to own it, yet? Were there awkward wedding things referencing it?
Sep 17, 2012 3:18 pm
Yeah, I’ll quote from our ceremony: “Robin and Collin were not planning on meeting the person they would marry on the fateful night of August 23, 2008. Robin was hoping to celebrate Carrie’s birthday and get in one more night of fun before her second year of law school began. Collin was celebrating not only Carrie’s birthday, but his own, because that is how twins work. Embarrassingly, Robin wouldn’t realize that until after Collin had already bought her several drinks.
I’ll skip the other embarrassing parts of this story for the sake of the family in the audience and the dignity of the bride, and fast forward to Robin and Collin beginning a courtship and swiftly falling in love.”
Sep 17, 2012 3:26 pm
Hahahaha oh noooo. That’s not SO bad, though. Right? Or is it?
Sep 17, 2012 3:42 pm
Thank you Robin for sharing embarrassing “adult” stories of which I also have plenty. While our childhood (self-peeing) selves are long gone, we are still our adult selves who had those deeply mortifying things happen to them in the semi-recent past.
Sep 17, 2012 3:47 pm
Seriously, Evie, I tried to remember embarrassing adult stories, and I have COMPLETELY forgotten them. Except that one. Which, I am not ready to put on the internet. If we ever have a party, and I am pretty drunk, I will maybe tell that story.
Sep 17, 2012 3:49 pm
TEASE.
Sep 17, 2012 7:22 pm
Someday, there will be a Manhattan party. And all my mysteries will be revealed. ;)
Sep 17, 2012 3:53 pm
OKFINE grown up ones. This makes me cringe so so so hard. Oh lawd.
So, first, sometimes I switch out “L”s for “R”s. Like “herrow” for example. Because Scooby Doo does it, and I really appreciate Scooby Doo and I’m not going to apologize for it.
The Foliage and I, while in the process of buying a house, went to a moving sale. We went to this lady’s house, and she’s a professional chef. She had tons of crap we didn’t want, and kept pressuring us to buy, but a GIGANTIC pile of PROFESSIONAL GRADE cookware ALL FOR FREE. So obviously I was all over that ish. And then I felt bad that we were taking so much stuff for free, so I figured we’d buy her little electric space heater, since we were buying an older, drafty house.
While TF loads up the car wtih our stuff, I’m writing the check, and she’s telling us about her restaurant (it turns out, one of my faves, a dumpling place downtown, as she’s Asian), and at one point I’m all, “O RERE?” To an Asian lady. I said “rere.” I ask you, WHERE DO YOU GO FROM THERE. I just signed the check, and handed it to her. She wouldn’t tell me her name to put on the check, is how much this lady hated me.
Sep 17, 2012 4:05 pm
Ceej, this is terrible. I love it.
Sep 17, 2012 4:03 pm
I am literally laughing so hard I’m crying after reading that blog post. OH MY GOD. Too good.
Sep 17, 2012 3:24 pm
Most Embarrassing #2.
It was the end of my first year in college, and I had spent that semester falling in luuuurve with an upper-classman (as is my MO) and so naturally, he was gonna graduate and go back home and I’d never see him ever again. We spent a lot of time together that last week, and I kept waiting for him to ask for my number (we didn’t have cells at the time, so he didn’t have my home # yet, OH THE EARLY 2000′s) or somehow insinuate that we’d be keeping in touch/getting married/having babies.
The very last night there was a big picnic (OMG YOU GUYS I JUST REALIZED THE PICNIC CONNECTION) to say farewell to the senior class or whatev, and my roommate and I were CONVINCED this is when the professions of love would happen etc etc.
So, I’m standing there in my cutest “oh, this old thing?” outfit, batting eyelashes, just waiting for whatever the heck comes next.
He leans in and gives me a hard stare, furrowed brow look in the face and says, “Liz… I need to tell you something….”
(LIZ HOLDS BREATH)
“You have something on your nose. A… a booger. You have a booger on your nose.”
Cue death of embarrassment and fleeing the scene.
Sep 17, 2012 3:43 pm
Well, since everyone’s sharing their pee stories…
I went out to a bar with a few friends, and lost track of time (and count of my beers) while catching up. At the end of the night one of my friends and I decided it would be a good idea to walk the mile and a half home, instead of calling a cab. Half way through the walk I realized I needed to pee, BADLY. Didn’t say anything and kept walking. Got within a block home and realized I didn’t just need to go badly, I needed to go NOW.
Cue me running down the block, walking around in circles in the elevator, running down the hallway (because of COURSE my apartment had to be the furthest away), getting inside and running to the bathroom.
Where I proceeded to miss the toilet. Not for long, but I totally missed at first. And then realized my jeans were wet, too. ::cringes::
This was last Friday. I have never been so glad I was the only one home IN MY LIFE.
Sep 17, 2012 6:27 pm
Mine is still super cringe-worthy.
Junior high track and field. I ran the hurdles, but our school didn’t have enough money for starting blocks, so I had never practiced with them. Then in competition, everyone else used them and I opted out. Needless to say, my start wasn’t great. But I made it over 1 hurdle just fine. On the second hurdle, I clipped it with my back foot and it hit the ground. I tried to keep going but fully knocked over the next one and fell down skinning my whole shin. What did I do? Limp away? No, that would be too easy. I tried to hurdle the next one! Which is impossible without a running start! That was awkward, right? Time to give up? Nope.
Instead, I just sprinted down the track alongside the hurdles. I finished the race. Dead last. And it wasn’t a matter of ‘finish what you started’; it was more like, ‘oh, that poor girl is stunned and doesn’t know what else to do.’
I couldn’t even tell the story for at least five years. Then I cringed as I told it for the next five. Only now, fifteen years later, has the stung wore off. :)
Sep 17, 2012 6:30 pm
Ah, and I forgot one bit that made me even more mortified: My dad, the high school and college track star, took off work to attend that meet. He hugged me at the end and didn’t say a discouraging word, but capital-F failure doesn’t begin to describe how I felt.
Sep 17, 2012 6:57 pm
Lauren, that’s awful!
It reminds me of when I did ballet. It was my first or second year on pointe, and right in the middle of a solo, my ribbons came untied. Like an IDIOT, I continued to try to stand on my toes! With my shoe just wobbling around down there. Of course, I fell in a heap and then to try to make it seem part of everything or something? I just sat there on the ground and like… wiggled my arms around to the music, hahahahaha.
Sep 18, 2012 9:34 am
I was a hurdler too. I definitely have these stories. Someone on my team broke their arm that way in junior high so sometimes you go and think “it could’ve been worse.”
Sep 17, 2012 6:36 pm
Sex embarrassment:
When Ry and I visit my parent’s house he’s obviously not allowed upstairs, nor I in the room he stays in. And the first year we dated I had to go upstairs to bed whenever my mom did, so as to ensure my (false) virginity be protected. This, of course, led to us taking loooong joy rides and doing it in the car in dark parking lots like the true heathens we are.
One fateful night, we went to a spot we’d visited many times before, climbed into the back seat of my not-nearly-spacious-enough Civic and started to get to it. Only to then get interrupted by what is probably the oldest & sweetest looking old man cop of all time. He demanded Ry get out of the car and let me put my clothes back on before he lectured us.
Unfortunately, we’ve not yet learned our lesson and I have about 80 more stories all too similar to this one…
Sep 17, 2012 11:29 pm
OK So I was like… 16 or 17 years old and was hooking up with some guy who was a bit younger than me. Anyways, we were in the car that my dad and I shared. And we were goin’ on with our business (it was my first blow job that I had ever given!), and then we realized it was late (like, 2 or 3 am) so I started up the car to drive him, and then me, home. Except the car didn’t start. The battery had died because I left the lights or the radio or something on. So at 2:30 in the morning (luckily I had an “in case of emergency” cell phone), I had to call my dad, wake him up, and ask him to drive across town to jump the car. With the boy there. I was mortified. My dad and I never spoke of the event again.
This reminds me also of my first experience with a penis at all. I was vaguely giving it a hand job (also in that car that my dad and I shared, hah), but I was so scared of what was going to happen when the guy came [I kind of thought that it was going to erupt like a volcano or explode and hit the ceiling of the car and that would have been so messy and gross] that I just stopped halfway through the HJ and kind of patted his penis and said, “OK, see you tomorrow” to the guy.
So, you know… Penises. Totally embarrassing.