My So-Called Embarrassing Life

While watching "The Voice" last night, one of the contestants did a great job but apparently got a little overzealous with her microphone. After she performed, she talked to the judges with red lipstick smeared under her nose the entire time. The poor girl was so danged cute but she looked like she had eaten a McRib sandwich in a wind tunnel. I felt so badly for her. She had no idea that she wasn't looking camera ready and I mean, how many millions of people were watching the show? She may or may not be the same contestant who joked about how she falls a lot and was really concentrating so that she wouldn't take a dive while singing. I can't recall because I was probably too busy projecting.

It all got me to thinking of how mortifying it would be to find out that you just made your worldwide television debut with a big ole lipstick smear under your nose - and I couldn't help but think back on some of the most embarrassing moments in my life so far. I know that I told you about my less-than-stellar incidents with the pest control lady already so you probably won't be surprised at some of these. Oh, and note: I'm sure that there will be worse ones before I'm done on this planet so Mother Universe, I am not challenging you to keep things real by locking me out of the house naked or anything. Duly noted, m'kay?

Up until this point, here are some of my fondest "oh hell" moments. And if you're squeamish about blood, bodily functions or teenage angst then you might want to skip this post. Here we go:


I once ran myself a nice hot bath and then sat down in it only to realize that I had just plonked down with all of my weight on a plastic disposable razor. The razor's casing broke and that brand new, sharp razor blade wedged itself into the meat one of my butt cheeks. Oh yes, church. They don't call me "Ole Scarbutt" for nothing. I remember standing up out of the water and seeing soooo much blood. Mortified, I tried to stop the bleeding with a towel so that I wouldn't have to tell anyone but before long, I realized that I was going to bleed out and die without some medical intervention. My husband got involved and then he called my Mom and before we knew it, I was being rushed to the ER. I couldn't sit so I was on my stomach in the back seat of the car,  clutching a stack of towels over my wound.  Of course, when I got to the hospital, the doctors and nurses had never seen my particular ailment before so they stopped by my curtained room in  droves to gaze at my wound and make jokes about my embarrassing predicament while I lay stomach down on the gurney.

Before long, I just succumbed to the oddness of the situation and chirped to each looky-loo "There goes my career with Playboy!" I'll never forget the pain of the doctor irrigating that wound to see if rogue bits of plastic had been left in - without any anesthesia . And those stitches. All of those stitches. Unfortunately, the mortification didn't end there as those stitches wouldn't allow me to bend over or sit for quite some time. I had to tell my employer about what happened to me and became quite the butt of office jokes. No pun intended. I also got some pretty good butt themed gag gifts from my family at Christmas that year.

It's funny - there you are in your home, about to take a nice long soak in the tub and before you know it, throngs of complete strangers are staring at your naked posterior. Don't ever think that you know what is about to happen in life. Let me tell you.  For instance, don't think that you can ever wear mismatched socks and have nobody see. This is from another time that I landed in the ER:

Always keep in mind that when you get dressed in the morning, there is just no telling who is going to see you undressed. No..no...I don't mean it like that. While I was working a job as an office manager, I had what was thought to be a stroke while sitting at the front desk. All of a sudden I couldn't talk or use one side of my body. I'll never forget a couple of my coworkers gently caressing my hair and whispering, "She's having a stroke. SHE'S HAVING A STROKE!" 

The paramedics came and as if the situation wasn't memorable enough, they removed my bra right there in front of God and country (and my male bosses). They then wheeled me out on a gurney for the whole office complex to come out and gawk at. And those who couldn't come outside? I saw them pressed against the windows taking in the freak show from afar. For the entire time that I worked at that company after that, I often found myself checking to see if my blouses and cardigans were securely fastened. I couldn't even walk to the copier or set up the coffee machine without wondering if my fellow coworkers and bosses were thinking "Saw her boobs!"

In a related mortifying moment, weeks later after seeing a neurologist for the above situation, I was walking through the hospital parking lot and realized that my car was parked one level down. I decided that the easiest route would be to walk down a grassy hill to get there. Before I knew it, I had lost my footing and slid down the hill like I was on an invisible sled, my skirt up over my waist with underpants unveiled for all the world to see. But I didn't stop there! I had so much momentum that I actually came to rest with the lower portion of my body under a parked car. I lay there, looking around to see if anyone had seen my fall from grace and was pleased to see that nobody else was around. I lurched out from under the car, pulled down my skirt and began to pick gravel and grass out of the backs of my arms and legs while walking gingerly to my car. It was then that I realized that there was a car full of people parked a few feet away who had seen the entire incident! I gave them a quick wave in some kind of lame attempt at saying, "It's okay! I do this all of the time!" and got the hell out of there.

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Okay, I've just realized that with just like the two events above, sometimes embarrassing incidents beget embarrassing incidents - like this pair from seventh grade:

I have always been directionally challenged and without fail quaked in fear of  finding my classes at the start of each new school year. In that same vein, when I started seventh grade, I was assigned to a science class being taught by Mr. Williams. I ended up going to the wrong room and on name alone, took my seat in an art class being taught by another Mr. Williams. When my name wasn't on his roll, he just added it and there I was, a student in his class. Weeks went by before anyone realized that I wasn't supposed to be there and I was forcibly removed by the principal during class one day and exiled back to the intended Science class. But not before I could embarrass myself there. Oh no.... Something had happened a couple of weeks before. There was a boy in my class that I had a huge crush on. He sat next to the pencil sharpener and one day, I decided to sharpen my pencil just so that I could make googly eyes at him. Of course, I dropped my pencil but it gets worse. When I bent over to pick it up, a big stream of seasonal allergy snot dripped from my nose and left a puddle on the floor in front of his table! I. Had. Dripped. Snot. On. The. Floor. In. Front. Of. The. Cutest. Boy. In. School. 

That junior high story reminds me of how I got my period for the first time. (Oh yes, the "T.M.I" train is about to leave the station! Toot! Toot!)  Not even Judy Blume in her infinite wisdom could have prepared me for what was about to happen. It was the same year as the snot puddle incident - seventh grade. As you can see, seventh grade was quite the year for uncontrolled bodily functions. I was one pee or poop away from covering all of the bases! OF COURSE, in true "Dear Sassy Magazine...I want to kill myself!" fashion, I was wearing my white capri pants that day. Ladies, will you join me now in a collective groan?

I didn't know what to do (this was the age before we all had cell phones) so I sat hiding in a bathroom stall for the longest time and finally reasoned that my health teacher would know best since she talks about well, you know..body stuff. I knocked on her door and she left the class that she was teaching. She was very sweet and  tied an old cream faux Members Only jacket ("Members Club" if you have to know) around my waist to hide the evidence and sent me to the principal's office. My Mom picked me up and before the day was done, some mean girls told absolutely everyone about what had happened.

When I went back to school the next day, it was practically under martial law because I was determined not to go back. I was now "a woman" after all and could make my own damned choices! Once I was there, I found that I had been given all kinds of new cruel nicknames. If there was any bright lining to that cloud, it was that those nicknames took the place of the one that I'd been given previously. Apparently, those same girls had perceived earlier in the school year that I had big thighs and branded me "Hammy". If only I'd had the power of Stephen King's scorned Carrie. Hammy Bleedy Pants would have lodged swift fiery justice on those kids! 

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Ooh! Just so that you won't think that my embarrassing incidents peaked out in seventh grade, I once had a ninth grade Summertime romance with a guy who thought that I was someone else. There was this guy named Wilson who was okay, oh my god...so hot. He had just what I was looking for - the tight jeans and the flyback hair and that gangly-but-intriguing physique of any well-turned tenth grade guy.  He was a year older than me and I had been crushing on him for two years. During the second year, a friend got tired of listening to me whine about him not noticing me and decided that she was going to fix things. School was out for the Summer and at some cruise-in at the park (wait...do kids cruise anymore??) , she told him that her friend who wasn't there had a huge crush on him and described to him who I was.  He said that he knew who I was and that he thought that I was cute too! Holy heck! We were going to be just like Hope and Bo on "Days of Our Lives"! He got my phone number from her and great day in the morning... he called me! 

After that, we talked every day on the phone for weeks. We didn't see each other in person since school was out for the Summer (I don't know...maybe we lived on opposite ends of the city....or on opposite sides of the railroad tracks like Andie and Blane..it's totally weird) but talked for hours at a time, sharing all of the stuff that teenagers share. I was totally in love with him and couldn't wait for school to start so that we could walk around with our hands in each other's back pockets like kids in the eighties did. The other girls were going to be SO jealous! I had already merged my name with his in imagined marital bliss all over my notebooks. It was all a dream until the one fateful day when he said that he was going to stop by and hang out in person. I waited on my front porch swing and before long, he appeared in his souped up Nova. I went out to talk to him and could tell that he was acting a little strange. He didn't stay long but I chalked his haste up to nerves. He never called me again. 

I then learned from the same friend who fixed us up that he had thought that he had been talking on the phone to some other girl all Summer and hadn't remembered who I was at all! Once he saw me, he realized his blunder and didn't think that I was "cute"in the least and headed for the hills. I chalked it up to my having gained some weight over the Summer and wrote him this totally ridiculous four page letter (in pencil on college-ruled notebook paper don't you know) about how he was shallow and should "give fat girls a chance too". I really did - and mailed it to his house with a postscript of "I'll be willing to give you a second chance and will love you forever" written at the bottom. Of course, he never responded.

And yes, I have looked him up on Facebook. He still looks great and never developed the huge boil that I'd wished would appear and disfigure him to let him know "how it feels" to be judged on looks. 

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And here is an additional grown-up example of how the fun never ends: 

I once got  too close to a wall heater and melted the entire back off of my polyester skirt. The minute that it touched the heater, it must have just melted away. Somehow, I didn't realize it until I had driven downtown and trolled leisurely through an antique mall with my whole backside showing. At some point, I passed a mirror and was shocked to find that I had been flashing people right and left! It boggles my mind that I didn't feel a breeze but what boggles me even more is that you KNOW that people saw what was going on back there and didn't tell me! Wouldn't you tell someone -even a complete stranger - if the backside of their skirt was missing?? I got out of that store FAST. 

I'll stop here because this post has gotten reaaaaally long and because well, you people have never received pay to be my shrinks. Let's just say that along with those stories go other stories. Stories of stupid first impressions where I've said the wrong things. And job interviews where I just had to launch into stories about things like looking people for deer ticks and how if I were a dog, I'd be a golden retriever.  And falling into holes, hitting my head on cabinets, door jams and car trunks. And the two times that I have walked around in public with my skirt tucked into the back of my underpants. (A big shout out to all of the passengers at the Nashville International Airport who looked on speechless!)

 If you guys have any funny and embarrassing stories that you'd like to tell, please leave them in the comments. I'm sure that they'll make me feel better about my own history of "of course this is happening...of course!" And please, for the love of all that is good and holy - if you are ever with me and you see that I have a private part exposed or a huge chunk of spinach between my two front teeth, just tell me.  If I stumble into a ditch or a cactus patch, just lend me your hand.  Don't worry that I'll be embarrassed. Embarrassment and I go way back - why, we're practically best friends. 

Until next time,

x's and o's,

Eartha