Embarrassment is best left to professionals

The other day I was talking to a friend of mine about embarrassment, and that I generally feel resistant to it. Feel free to read my Drink Stories if you disagree.

So I got to thinking on the subject, and decided that without the feeling of embarrassment, an individual shows more potential to be a psychopath. This scared me a bit, so I thought long and hard about times that I have honestly been embarrassed. Luckily, I found a few. Well, four. But that’s a good start along the road to recovery from potential psycopathdom! Don’t you think? Yes.

Things that I have done where I have actually felt some level of embarrassment:

1. Farted on the back of a frat-guy’s neck while “squeezing” by his chair, upstairs at Boar’s Head (now Opal Divine’s). I ran out of that mutha like it was an AIDs factory. I don’t approve of fraternities, but that gives me no right to blow dirt on a man’s jugular. Even if it was an accident. I am not completely sure whom I feel most embarrassed for…

2. Carried out an aerobics routine in the 5th grade, in front of the whole elementary school and faculty.
Those of us in the advanced classes, or Super Outstanding Students (S.O.S – lord help the retards) as we were called, somehow got charged with the duty of entertaining the school by showing off our physical abilities. Even though it was supposed to be our brains which set us apart from the rabid masses of pre-pubescents, the powers-that-be wanted us to showcase a workout routine. We were to set an example for the rest of the school because, just like the youth of today, no self-respecting kid willingly did exercise. We were expected to turn that tide, and convince everyone through a brilliant show of art and physique that staying fit was somehow cool.
Yes, a stage full of sweaty nerds should do just that, neatly. Marketing genius, I tell you. Genius. Why they chose the geeks to do this, I will never understand.
Jane Fonda had some tapes at the time, so we set out to copy her technique, stretch for fucking stretch. Being poor, my family did not have the cheddar to toss at workout clothing, so I had to use my summer cut-offs. In order to ensure maximum flexibility for the rather challenging sets a-la Fonda, those cut-offs had to be cut higher, and higher. Eventually, the cloth pockets could be seen, tongueing out from underneath the frayed denim edge. If my balls had any hair at that time, it would have been seen by all. They were entirely too short for a boy, and it was entirely beyond disappointing that they were my only pair. The end result was beyond gay, totally unnecessary, and the fitness craze did not “catch on” the way our instructors hoped. Face it, nerds DO NOT influence anyone by showcasing talent. They do it by exacting revenge on the population that ignored them throughout their miss-treated lives. Not by sweating and prancing around on stage in daisy-dukes. Fucking irreversible embarrassment.

3. When I was in third grade I used to get chased by this crazy 6th grader at daycare. This fucker was nuts. He ate the sewage-mud on the playground (H-town reprezent with the filth!) and made shanks for fun.
One fine afternoon, he was chasing me around the playground, threatening to puncture my vital organs with a sharpened tree branch, when I saw my mother walk out on to the cement landing by the door. She started up a conversation with the feather-haired Dokken-lover we had for a “counselor”, as I continued to dodge my mud-frothed pursuer. I managed to work the chase around to where my mother was, and hid behind her. As soon as the stick-wielding lunatic closed in on us, I began pointing up at my mom, from under her shadow, yelling “you have to stop chasing me now, my mommy is here and she will protect me!” Me: smiling triumphantly as the future inmate slowed up a bit, reluctantly looking up at my mother. The loon-ball: darting his eyes up and down, between my mother’s face and my own, his grin starting to reappear. My Mother: completely oblivious to her son standing next to her, in her shadow. She continued to talk about absolutely NOTHING while the murderer-in-training reached in, yanked me from my mother’s side, dragged me over to a tree in the corner of the playground, and beat me against the trunk like a rolled-up carpet. I was not afraid of the beating, or his penitentiary knives (they never penetrated the skin anyway, he always picked low-quality sticks). I was embarrassed for my mother when I finally broke free, and the raging bag of hormones she was gabbing with was the first to ask me my reason for crying, while my mother simply asked where I had been “this whole time.” I would have sold my mum for $2, Canadian, right then, to the nearest band of Gypsies. I mean, even the head-banger chick asked... The shame runs deep.

4. Seventh grade, Phys Ed, dodge-ball, in the boys’ locker room. We were split up evenly between guys and girls to make it fair. There was no way, however, to use the same method of “fairness” along the age-line. We had some old-ass 7th graders, with full-beards and kids of their own in the neighboring elementary school. Well, maybe not any children in the neighboring school. Their kids probably went to school wherever their baby’s momma’s grandparents lived. Bygones… Coach passed out balls for the beginning volley, and I caught one! It was yellow, previously recognizable as a Nerf product that had since been chewed to a lumpy-fuzziness, and smelled the way you would expect a hippo of similar size to smell. It was a biohazard, but it was mine. Until the potentially 32-year old classmate next to me decided that my happiness was just too much to take. He started by asking for the ball, which was met by my proud denial. I mean, would he resort to violence, right here in front of the whole class? Over a funky-ass post-Nerf product? Yes. He would. And he did. It came in the form of a right cross that caught me over the mouth. I say “over” because his fist seemed to eclipse half of my face. The impact caused three unfortunate events: 1- I fell backward off the bench, 2- I dropped my stinky ball, and 3- I started to tear-up and looked across the way to see the most popular cheerleader staring right at me, shaking her pony-tailed head. Fuck me. Why couldn’t one of the seemingly endless army of mongoloid half-wits occupying the distant ends of her bench witness my fleecing instead? I never figured out what she was shaking her head at. Embarrassing, either way.

That’s all I can think of off the top of my head.

What about YOU and YOUR embarrassing moments? Whatchu got?

Damn you previously-Nerf products!