Embarrassing Moments?

Several days ago The Pioneer Woman had a contest at her blog, asking people to tell what their most embarrassing moment was. She had thousands (really) of responses, and I've had the page up for all these days, reading a few of the comments every here and there when I needed a laugh. She opened the contest at 5pm, and I'm only up to 5:50pm. There's a lot of material here. Definitely enough to write a book.

As I read through the stories, there were a lot of them in common. Many potty accidents and surprise menstruation. Lots of farting at inopportune times. Tons of women accidentally exiting the restroom with their skirt tucked up into their pantyhose, or with toilet paper stringing along behind them like an unfortunate birthday party decoration. Thankfully, I don't have any of these on my "record."

When I try to think of embarrassing moments, I can think of things that a lot of people would have found embarrassing, but don't really feel that way to me. I guess I was probably embarrassed about some things when they happened, but either I have a great ability to laugh at myself and put things into perspective, or I have a very strong tendency to block out unpleasant memories.

There was the time when I was a high school senior and I purchased what I thought was an absolutely awesome dress for my Christian school's version of the prom. (The danceless prom, I guess you could say, LOL) I was so thrilled with my choice, and wanted to really make a splash at the event, that I wouldn't even tell my closest friends what the dress looked like. It probably only took 2 weeks before I was sitting in art class with my friend Marla, when she told me about the awesome dress she had purchased for the big night. As she described it, it became quite obvious that she had managed to buy THE SAME DRESS! All I remember about this was being about to fall over with shock, telling her, and then the two of us deciding that neither of us wanted to take back the dress we had bought. The dresses were back with white trim. So, we agreed to accessorize differently. I went with black pantyhose, she went with white. LOL Marla was attending with my brother as her date, and the four of us were part of a larger group of kids that were hanging out that night. We played it up with lots of pictures of the two of us sporting identical dresses and had a good time with it. :) ( just went hunting through my old photo albums in my cedar chest to find it. it's there alright. Unfortunately, it's not a clear enough picture that you can really appreciate it fully.)

Once I went swimming with a guy I was dating, and when I came up out of the water and was talking to him, he had to tell me that I had a big line of snot hanging out of my nose. Oy vey! That's a painful one. That's what you get when you blow out of your nose when you swim under water, I guess. Go ahead and learn from my mistake, will ya? I never swim now without constantly making sure that there's no snot viewable to the general public. (He had a great, goofy sense of humor, so it was really not a big deal. We laughed and he got to pick on me about it.)

I have already shared two of my best funny stories from childhood--Farm Fresh Eggs, and Four Foot Eleven. Both were awkward situations, but man-oh-man I have gotten a TON of laugh mileage out of those over the years. Well worth the embarrassment at the time!