I have embarassed myself many times, occasions that would all make for fine stories here, but the one that springs to mind right this instant is the time the school asshole decided to play a practical joke on me.

For some reason, which I cannot recall, he and I were late to a class we both shared. We had both been to the classroom and discovered a shortage of chairs and so we went in search of two unused chairs in an unused classroom.

"Try your class form room, that should be empty", Tristan (the asshole) said to me. Not thinking twice about it, I agreed and thought that yes, that was a good place to find a couple of chairs.

I opened the door a little bit, and before I could open it further, I felt myself being pushed hard. I fell through the doorframe, hurting my arm as I did so, and whirled around angrily at Tristan.

"Tristan, you fucking piece of shit!!!!", I yelled at him, annoyed at being pushed, and even more annoyed I'd hurt my arm.

Suddenly I realised that I wasn't alone in the room. I turned around and realised there was a class of boys sitting there, and as if that wasn't embarassing enough, there was a teacher there with them, angrily making his way towards me. And not just any teacher - it was the vice-principle, who asked me the meaning of my intrusion and the vulgarity.

Flushed with a mix of anger and embarassment, I told him why I'd more or less burst into the classroom, and that someone had pushed me and that we'd needed chairs. There was no one there to save me, so I decided to just tell the truth, that I'd been pushed and that I was sorry.

He was decent about it. He lectured me on the use of bad language, and sent me on my way. Tristan was found outside, was also lectured, and given after-school detention for causing all the hassle.

Oh, and we got our chairs.

tomcosgrave {tom@tomcosgrave.com}   31 Dec 2002

When I was seven and attending a potluck at the club where I played tennis, I tried to pour Dr. Pepper into a cup out of a two liter bottle. "Don't spill it" someone said a split second before the bottle fell out of my hands, landed bottom up and sent a spray of soda up into my face. Everybody laughed but me.

Why do people always worn you after it's too late?

Kevin Smokler   31 Dec 2002

When it comes to performance, memorization is my bane.

I was the narrator in a fairly pedestrian comedy in junior high. And I was great, so long as I had my script with me. The audience was not particularly large (about 100), but my embarrassment at blanking out on the closing lines of the production was. Our sour-faced drama teacher was of no assistance whatsoever.

Later in life, for my annual audition with the Portland Youth Philharmonic, I got the bright idea of memorizing my audition piece (Telemann, I believe). I practiced and practiced and practiced. And come audition time, I choked halfway through. Mr. Avshalomov very kindly asked me if I wanted to get my music. After I got it out, I was so rattled, I sounded like crap.

It took me a while to learn it, but luckily, in life memorization isn't terribly important.

christopher naze   31 Dec 2002

It was summer after senior year and I was wandering around the military base taking care of all those things that need to be done before leaving home for the first time and heading to college. I got my MMR shots at the hospital, I dropped off CDs that I had borrowed, I went to the BX and did some shopping. As I was criss-crossing the base, I kept running across this young GI I had dated very briefly a few months prior.

In the first encounter we traded glares. On the second we smiled. On the third we laughed and spoke for a few minutes and then parted ways. When I got to the post office to mail some packages to my dorm, I saw him again leaning up against the wall and talking with a friend. As I walked by him to leave I stopped and looked him right in the eye and said, "You're like a bad dream!"

His friend said, "Damn! That's cold!" and he said, "No, I'm not, I'm a good one." His voice sounded different and he seemed shorter. And then I really looked at him and glanced at his nametag -- wrong guy. Wrong guy!

To this day, I feel bad about that. I did nothing but stammer and bolt for the door. That poor guy. What must he have thought?

Ironically, I was just heading over to the eyeglasses place to pick up my first ever prescription set of lenses.

amanda   31 Dec 2002

I still remember the first day I ever took a shower in public. There I was, a scrawny little 12-year-old girl too scared to bare her body to the world. Wrapped in my towel and naked underneath, I actually took great care to pick a spot away from all the girls in the locker room, somewhere in the far corner, where the absolute minimum number of people could see me naked.

I ended up choosing a spot across from Cindy, who apparently was the only one already showering—and quite freely at that. She seemed to be completely unfazed about the whole thing, so I started to feel better about the situation, too.

I could do this, I thought. After all, showering in public was no big deal.

I stepped gingerly toward the standing water pipe, one hand clutching the towel knot at my chest and the other hand reaching for one of the faucets on the pipe. It was at that moment that I noticed how wet the floor was; somehow my foot found its way to the edge of a giant puddle, and before I knew it—

My foot slipped out from under me, and I fell with a thud on my behind.

The fall caught me completely by surprise, which resulted in the loosening of my grip on the towel. Naturally, the knot came undone, and the ends of the towel spread out like wings, falling to the ground like dead sails.

Before I could even grasp what was happening, I heard Cindy laugh—belly-deep laughs that rang with echos in that shower end of the locker room. Hastily, I tried to get up, pulling my towel out from under me as I did so.

...and fell down yet again as my bare ass met the cold, wet floor with a smack.

Cindy's laughter exploded even more, if that was possible. My towel, in the meantime, had decided to leave me, having flown from my hand in a lazy arc that ended right in the puddle.

I felt flush with panic and embarrassment. I had to get up (and stay up) so that Cindy would stop laughing so hard. I managed to get a foot underneath me, but then the heel slipped in the water, and I fell down yet again.

How humiliating!

There I was, naked and sprawled, with Cindy in the stall across from me, pointing at me and laughing her head off. Not a dainty little girl laugh, mind you. Tomboy Cindy was laughing like a loon, so hard that she couldn't even breathe. I can't imagine what my face must have looked like. No doubt it added fuel to the fire that was Cindy's mirth.

It was a long, long time before I managed to get up with whatever dignity I had left—an even longer time before the echos of her belly laughs wore out.

And yeah. I still bear the scars of that day; even now, years later, I'm not able to shower in public with any ease.

April   3 Jan 2003

When I was growing up, my family had a thing for scaring each other. We'd hide in the alcove just inside the garage and cause our parents to drop all the grocery bags in terror; we'd jump out of the floor-length curtains of a darkened room just as someone was entering to settle in for bed and make them fear the dark for weeks. It got to the point where we all walked around on high alert, trying to find hints of movement in the shadows or hear barely-stifled sniggers of anticipatory laughter in usually-unsuccessful attempts to avoid being scared to death. Occasionally, we'd even extend our love of a good scare to the outside world, generally without major consequences.

One afternoon, the whole family was at the mall, and while wandering by the Gap, my siblings and I spied one of our elementary school teachers. The first thing that crossed my mind was what a good idea it'd be to sneak up behind her and scare her, and I immediately slinked through a few floor racks in an effort to maneuver behind her. Within microseconds of me splitting up from my brother and sister to move in for the scare, they realized something that I didn't -- the woman wasn't our old teacher, just someone who looked a lot like her. Alas, I didn't realize this until about a half second *after* I jumped out for the surprise; the look on the woman's face was enough to make me utter a quick "Oh, god, I'm so sorry!" and run from the store. When I got back outside, my entire family was doubled over in the kind of laughter that makes them incapable of even breathing, and most of the people in the store were staring out at me with a look somewhere between confusion and pure hatred.

This happened over two decades ago; I have yet to live it down in my family.

Jason {fray.com@queso.com}   3 Jan 2003