Embarrassing Moments From The Past

Actually a few more recent ones as well. I’ve spent my life as a klutz, walking into furniture, misunderstanding things people say, generally just being a clumsy but hilarious person. Of course, I had to get over being embarrassed about everything first and that took a few years of total misery to accomplish.

One of the first times I remember was the night my older brother was chasing me around the house, a rather small house we could run around in circles through the accommodating open doors from room to room. Since I just knew big brother would never do anything to cause me harm I wasn’t concerned when he put a sheet over my head first. After all, he was older and smarter, or so I thought!

Sheet added he told me to run while he tried to catch me. Being only two at the time I did what he said, seeing only what was revealed under my passage but not any hazards coming up. Unfortunately my doll bed was one of those hazards that night and I hit it full force. Not too much damage except to the eye tooth that had begun to emerge! That tiny tooth had a root system that was unbelievably long. My first visit to the dentist was the next morning when Mother loaded me, along with the tooth, in the car and we discovered the entire root system had been lost and that particular tooth would never come in. Well,even the old family dentist could be wrong about a few things. Fourteen years later I felt the usual itching in that area that had always indicated a tooth coming in. And there it eventually was, my eye tooth, emerging crookedly into my mouth and fully visible when I smiled. A senior in high school finally cutting a tooth that should have been there so many years earlier! It was a couple of years before I smiled without covering my mouth because for some reason my new tooth came in crooked with brown spots on it.

The next one I remember was the day I was helping my granddad gather eggs. Not wanting to run to the basket each time I found a nest and gathered the eggs in it I was saving time by putting the eggs in the pocket of my new dress. After deciding to swing on the gate at one of the cow stalls it seemed only natural that as soon as I got on it the cow would decide to exit that stall, sending me back against the railing that hit just about the right place to break the eggs in my pockets. So icky! Even my pretty patent leather Mary Janes got an egg bath from the pockets full of broken eggs. I climbed the fence and made a mad run for our house across the pasture, but it only delayed the teasing for awhile, Someone had seen the incident and told the rest of the family gathered there that day. If only I had know about shampoo and the wonderful shine eggs could give the hair that day I would have made my fine head of hair look like something from a salon, but that’s the way things go.

Later in life I found myself tripping over cracks in the sidewalk, one of them while on roller skates. And wearing another new dress. During lunch break at school. Falling flat and ripping that lovely new dress from the top of the skirt to the hem. With a few more hours before the bus came to take us home from school. A little hazy about the outcome there, but I think I hit the road for home while trying to hold my skirt together and showing minimum amounts of my slip. My mother was a very accomplished seamstress and was able to repair the skirt with nearly invisible stitches but each time I wore it all I remembered was that fateful day when it was ripped open. I didn’t even notice the bleeding cuts from the gravel until I got home.

Now to reenter high school. For our Senior trip we all decided to wear the pleated white skirts that were so fashionable at that time. BUT, mother couldn’t find the fabric for a white pleated skirt. She found some red pleated fabric and made my skirt out of that. It was beautiful while on the hanger but during an extended bus ride to Nashville on that warm day, squirming in the seat and being totally uncomfortable, when I stood up to exit the bus I first noticed the pleats in the back of the skirt no longer existed. Just a sort of ballooning in the back of the skirt. Not too cool. And in a strange city with a long day ahead to walk around with a ballooning rear in front of all those people!

Exit school days and enter the work force. My uniform pants had a crease down the front of the legs that was not exactly hidden from my view when I put them on before leaving for work that morning but I managed to miss that. Kept wondering why they were so uncomfortable but couldn’t figure it out until arriving at work and sitting through the morning meeting. Back to my cubicle and tried to put something in the pocket that wasn’t where it should have been and only then noticing they were on backward. Tried to sneak into the restroom to fix the situation before anyone noticed but of course it was noticed then. By the only person working there who was a bigger klutz that I was. I did my charting in my car that day and by morning she had managed to get her skirt sucked up in the vacuum system at the filling station while trying to clean out her car so my moment had passed almost without notice — until my 3 year old grandson called to tell me the way to know the front from the back was to look for the label and make sure that was always in the back. Who squealed?

Many years and many miles later I can see the humor of it all but when it was all happening it just didn’t seem all that funny, Somewhere along the line I’ve developed a sense of humor that was too embarrassed to show itself while younger.

Hope you all had a good day today. N0w if I could only learn to put my fingers on the right keys while typing….

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