It’s national de-lurking week, or some such nonsense. I highly doubt that we have that many lurkers around here (my woefully inadequate posting level should pretty much guarantee that). But, just in case there are some of you lurking, I figured what better way to delurk than with an embarrassing story?
I have many, many embarrassing stories, so I will get things started with one that I was just thinking about today.
When I was six or seven, my parents took me to the beach for the afternoon. When I was little, I had a tendency to make “friends” with pretty much everyone who came into my path. So, within five minutes of our arrival, I was building sand castles with another little girl.
When it was time to leave, our parents had us pack up our toys. This is when I saw the other little girl take my favorite blue shovel and put it in her beach bag. Ever the drama queen, I pitched a screaming, crying tempter tantrum. “She stole my shovel! She stole my shovel!” The little girl’s parents swore up and down that it was hers and my parents, very much embarrassed, dragged me away and demanded to know what in the hell was wrong with me (I was always a ridiculously well-behaved child. Public melt-downs just weren’t in my nature).
Years later, my mom admitted to me that she sometimes thought back on that story and felt extremely guilty. I did have a shovel like the one that the girl had put in her bag. And she (my mom) had never seen it again. “I’m sorry,” my mom sighed,” I think that little girl really did steal your shovel and we just let her. I’m so sorry.”
Sheepishly, I admitted to my mom something that I had kept a secret for over a decade. When we got home from the beach, I discovered my own shovel sitting in the sandbox. I was so ashamed to have caused a scene over someone else’s shovel that I buried my little blue shovel so that nobody would ever find it.
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So, that’s my story. Anyone have one of their own that they’d like to share?
Aw, that shouldn’t be funny, but it is. Did it feel good to finally get the secret out, and did you have a good laugh?
Mine isn’t really embarrassing anymore, because it has become the family joke that just won’t die.
As a kid, my brother played hockey, so we traveled a lot on the weekends. We usually tried to do something in the towns we visited because it got kinda boring just watching little kids play hockey and then sitting in the hotel room. Well, we went to Knoxville, TN one weekend and decided to go to the zoo.
Problem was, it was kind of overcast and yucky, so all the big animals with shelters were inside. We go by the elephant and rhinoceros pens, and can’t see anything, so we head over to where the birds are in cages. The bird area backs up to the rhinoceros area. I turn around and spot the rhinoceros and start telling my family, “Hey, look, the rhino is out!”
My dad tells me he has no clue what I’m looking at, and I’m getting frustrated, going “there, that thing right there!” Finally, my dad says “you mean that rock?”
Yeah, I wasn’t wearing my glasses and had mistaken a big rock for a rhino. My family still jokes about “The Rocknoceros”. They even have my husband in on it. We passed the zoo exit on a road trip and he had to comment “Knoxville Zoo, home of the rocknoceros, next exit!”
Hi, Hope! I tell enough embarassing stories about myself on my own blog, but I wanted to de-lurk long enough to say that I could so see me doing the same thing in the same blue shovel situation when I was five. I have a memory from third grade where, to this day, I would insist I never bit that classmate during our argument. I swear that, when I opened my mouth to yell at her, her arm hit me in the teeth. Honest! Hey, we have an intern at work who knows you from the college lit society! Enjoy your trip!
Hmm. Out of the sea of embarrassing moments the one that sticks out in my mind is the time when my parents and I were taking the ferry across the English Channel. It was a really cold and rainy day which aggrivated my cold, which was producing a record amount of snot. I was sitting and grumbling about my general state of mizery when I felt a sneeze coming on. I tried to get my hands to a kleenex tissue and said tissue to my nose but the sneeze was fast approaching. Needless to say neither my hands or the tissue made it to my face and I let out a huge sneeze. It produced the LARGEST snot bubble I have ever seen (to this day even). This would have made some of my bubble gum bubbles jealous. My eyes crossed and my hands jerked and I clapped them over my nose and mouth. I looked around hoping against hope that no one had seen this little epiosde, but alas an ENTIRE French school group, must have been 11 and 12 year olds, had seen it. And man were they laughing. Not to mention pointing and making fun of me in French. My mom looked at me with concern and asked what happened. I muttered, looking down at my hands, give me a kleenex. I got myself cleaned up and prayed that I got to England without another sneeze or so help me god I was jumping ship.