What is one of your most embarrassing moments?

You know what – this is a difficult question because while I have had moments that leave me embarrassed, they aren’t long-standing moments.  They are merely “moments”, and I like to just move along.  Acknowledge that it happened, feel the accompanying red-faced-flush, that hot-to-cold body temperature shift and… just let it pass.

However, I have had plenty of moments.  I’m not immune to the faux pax of sticking my foot in my mouth.  While I’ve gotten much, much better at saying nothing at all when what I really want to say is just BURSTING to spring forth… I pause, think for a moment, “How does my saying this benefit them or me?  Will it make them feel good, or feel like shit?  If they are made to feel like shit that’ll make me feel like shit and then it will be a big shit storm.  Okay, I’ll refrain.”

The post I ran into… wasn’t padded.

I also am not immune to general clutziness.  I have run into a sign post in the past… on my 21st birthday on the way back home from celebrating.  I wasn’t embarrassed however, because I’d been out enjoying adult beverages and I thought it was pretty funny AND the fact that moments after I ran into the sign post, my friend R was subjected to a drive-by-pantying.  He was infinitely more embarrassed about that event.

Lastly, the most vivid semi-embarrassing moment I can think of took place a few winters ago.  We’d had some heavy snow that winter and I’d been religiously keeping the front walk and porch clean.  We’d had a little snow one morning but the temperature was getting up into the low 30’s so the snow was melting.  The mailman had come, and me, clad in my t-shirt, jeans and my Acorn slipper socks, decided to run out and get the mail.  I did.

I think I need one of these signs… but then again, I could run into the post it’s on…

It was a calm day, so I enjoyed my walk, albeit hurried, out to the mailbox, my leather-soled slippers leaving half-melted footprints in the thin layer of snow.  The days delivery in hand, I made my way back to the house at the same hurried pace and in a decidedly good mood, I quickened my step for the last few paces, fatally stepping onto the porch in some snow and my feet went out from under/behind me and down I came onto my knees.  I stayed there for a moment, the pain shooting through me, the tingle of agitated nerves running laps along my spinal cord, and with a start I jumped up to my feet, looked about me for witnesses (I live in the “sticks” but we do have people living across the road), hearing only the chickadees and blue jays in the noise-deadened landscape.

I pronounced, “I meant to do that!”