Ridiculous Embarrassing Moments
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What is something embarrassing from life that keeps you up at night.
Like, the more hilarious and nonsensical, the better.
When I was 20, I had gone back to a call center I'd previously worked at (got laid off from another job). So I had to sit with people to get re-trained/back up to speed.
One morning, riding the elevator up to our floor, one of my buddies from when I had worked there previous asked who I was sitting with that day for training. In my half-asleep pre-coffee stupor I said "Ryan Seacrest" and not "Ryan <hisactuallastname>"
.......to this day, I lie awake at night in existential horror at least once a month over this.
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When I was seven years old I was in my first swim meet. It was at summer camp and I was so excited because I was a GREAT swimmer. They lined us up on the edge and I was the furthest from the referee and he was an old man with a very soft voice and there were several matches going on at the same time. I saw him raise the whistle but not blow into it and say something, but the only part i caught was "jump into the water."
So I jumped!
And about halfway up into the air I realized no one else was jumping and that he'd just been explaining 'when I blow this whistle, jump into the water.' The splash was so loud when I hit the water. EVERYONE turned to look at me as I stood there (it was the shallow pool) with my arms hovering just above the water totally uncertain as to what I should do. Do I get out? Do I just wait? The guy gave me such a look then blew his whistle and everyone else jumped in. I gave everyone a head start but still won. Except the woman timing me couldn't figure out how to stop the stop watch, so we all had to do it over.
I waited for the whistle blow the second time and ended up with a gold medal! But that feeling of dread and then everyone turning to look at me STILL makes me cringe.
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I'm... I don't know, probably eleven. It's summer vacation and we're at Big Surf, the (nearest) local water park. Entire geological eras have passed in the time I've been waiting in line to go down the big corkscrew slide. I still remember the dinosaurs, but not how they sounded.
But it's my turn, finally. I'm sitting on the little platform you launch yourself from, and I'm doing a thing I saw the big kids doing, where you grip the sides of the platform with your hands and slide your body back and forth. I don't know why they do it, but it reminds me of lining up a pool cue, so I think maybe it's to make you go faster down the slide or something. That sounds scary and fun, so I mimic it.
I mimic it too enthusiastically. I shoot myself down the wet, slippery, plastic canal at least two seconds sooner than I should have, and the lifeguard squawks an indignant, "Hey!" Mortified, I piston my arms out to the sides to catch the sides of the slide and I do, arresting my motion immediately. Wanting to make my mistake right, I plant my heels against the sides of the slide and start chimney-rock climbing my way back up it. The lifeguard, exasperated, yells, "Don't climb back up, just go!"
The speed and the spiral are no longer fun. The water does not cool my scorching cheeks. I spend the entire slide down thinking, "Please don't let the lifeguard at the bottom yell at me."
I could have saved that prayer.
But I'm eleven (or however young I actually was), so I bounce back. I don't ride the corkscrew slide again, though.
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I'm 13.
It's the junior high talent show.
My friend wants to dance to Weird Al's Attack of the Radioactive Hamsters From a Planet Near Mars.
I agree.
Then his mother fits me for a hamster costume.
The rest is only partially successfully blocked from my memory.
maximum craveability
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@TheOnceler <empathy fistbump>
Until this moment, I had almost forgotten about the fourth grade talent show, the Morris the Cat costume, and the lipsync number to 'If my friends could see me now' that my mother squealed madly about 'how adorable!!!' it was.
Now, in my head, adult me confronts the child psychologist who asked, 'Why do you think your parents didn't do enough to prevent you from being bullied in school?' with a slideshow, starting off with: "Exhibit one, your honor, this furry neon orange cat-eared potato sack and matching tights."
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I just wanted a soda. Preferably, a grape Sunkist. Every gas station in town has grape Crush, but Crush is an inferior soda and I will fight you over this, so I went to the gas station nearest me. I noticed the lights were dim and no one was behind the counter, but if you knew this gas station, that wouldn't surprise you. The night staff is, uh, not excellent.
So I went in. I could hear a voice from too far away to make out the words, but prior experience led me to believe this was probably a cashier back in the back on their phone, whom I'd have to track down to actually pay for my shit. I got my grape Sunkist and picked up a bag of TGIF cheddar and bacon Tater Skins on a whim, then went up to the counter and waited patiently for a minute.
The longer I waited, the more I became suspicious that the words I was hearing were repeating. Frowning, I walked around the corner to the place where the gas station joins the attached oil change place, and I'm glad I was wearing a mask because I'd just as soon not have any video record of the look on my face when I figured out it was the security system chanting, "Motion trigger activated. Please enter code."
I returned to the counter, gathered my purchases, returned them to where I got them from, and called a helpful-sounding woman who asked me what the nature of my emergency was. "Uh, I think I accidentally just broke into a gas station," I told her.
"What's the address?" she asked.
"I don't know, but it's on ------ Street, the one right across the road from the barbecue joint," I said.
"Are the lights on?" she asked.
"Yeah, and the door was open. I just walked in. I didn't even know they were closed until I heard the alarm," I said. I'm like eighty-seven percent sure I was not whining.
"Alright, you just sit tight there and I'll send someone out," the dispatcher said. She was trying very politely not to laugh so let's say eighty-six percent.
I went outside and waited for fifteen minutes, passing the time watching She-Ra reaction videos on my phone. Eventually, two units showed up and two very wide men in bulletproof vests with Rob Liefeld H-shaped bandoliers got out. They were both shorter than me, which was scarier to me than that they were cops or all the gear they were carrying. Men who are shorter than me always seem to think they have to prove something. I felt my shoulders hunching to make myself smaller.
I don't want to drag it out after that paragraph, though, because nothing happened. They saw the lights were on, saw the door was open, and saw the door was open because whoever had locked it had locked it with it open so the bolt coming out of the top of the door would actually prevent the door from locking. They took my ID down and sent me on my way. So all's well that ends well. I'm just a little unsettled by how quickly it stopped being funny.
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I have lain awake many a night, reliving my worst hits, again and again.
Then someone asked me to remember something humiliating someone else did. And I couldn't, at least not in any sort of quick fashion.
So I am trying to stop agonizing.
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@Macha said in Ridiculous Embarrassing Moments:
I have lain awake many a night, reliving my worst hits, again and again.
Then someone asked me to remember something humiliating someone else did. And I couldn't, at least not in any sort of quick fashion.
So I am trying to stop agonizing.
My sister and I had nearly this exact conversation this morning when I told her this story. You're not alone.
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@Macha said in Ridiculous Embarrassing Moments:
I have lain awake many a night, reliving my worst hits, again and again.
Then someone asked me to remember something humiliating someone else did. And I couldn't, at least not in any sort of quick fashion.
So I am trying to stop agonizing.
But anxiety brain is what it is.
(I also have a super shitty father who likes to bring up embarrassing moments to all and sundry. Also outright lies. And I'm not talking 'cutesy childhood' moments. I bring up some of those. So, in my case: there is at least one person in my life who I KNOW remembers -- or at least thinks he does even if it's all concocted in his head -- shit I've done and LOOOOOOOOVES to tell other people.)
