Brand spankin' new embarrassment

This one is quick and terribly fresh. 

A new person started in the marketing department today and, as usual, he started his computer training this afternoon. While I oversee the training, I'm not doing most of it, now that my two "trainers in training" are taking over piece by piece.

I met the trainee before the class started. He looked like Paul Rubens and when he shook my hand he made eye contact and held my hand far too long. I don't consider myself overly sensitive, but this really creeped me out. 

So, before he came in for class, I shut the door and whispered to both newbie IT people that I had just met the new guy and he seemed to me to be a little creepy.

To which the boy newbie (who is creepy in his own right) said, "He's my best friend, you know".

Well, of course he is.

How do you spell that shuddering groan the Simpsons do?

I am now about to share the number-one all time most embarrassing thing that's happened to me in my 38 years and 7 months. The one thing that even now reduces me to whimpers and rending of garments. This is the story that, when I tell it, elicits not raucous laughter but groans of sympathy.

It's not some mispronounced word or inappropriate phrase yelled at a stranger. It's not poorly-timed sickness in front of coworkers. It didn't happen in public, and it's not a funny vignette from my life. No one even witnessed this, it was just us two.

Even still, I don't feel an uncomfortable embarrassment, I feel shame. Shame because of who was involved; a deep shame of a personal nature that should never, ever have involved that other person. It is lasting and it is so sad that I still wince (to this day, even, were inclined to use that phrase, and I am not) when it pops into my head for no reason, like a champagne cork to the head from the table next to you at that expensive tapas place that puts too much mint in their drinks.

It is this:

I was once invited to a birthday swim party in high school. I was on my period, and I had never used a tampon before. The only woman around to assist me in understanding the mechanics of tampons was that woman.

Let that sink in. Roll it around your head like you're tasting it at a fancy wine bar: let the tastebuds of your mind pop as that bitter slab of my dignity withers and dies. Just try to pry the kernels of popcorn sticking painfully between your tooth and gum when you realize you know how that must have made her feel: pride that I "trusted" her to ask such an intimate question, the rush I'm sure she felt when she realized that she knew something that I did not.

Ok, that's maybe too much metaphor. Sorry. I'm trying to heal with words and sometimes tortured prose is the only way to make it work. I turn real emotions into imagined things that I can crush and stomp and hit and hopefully try to get out of my head.

But then I remember the story she once told of one of her husband's stays in the hospital. I have a lot of history with that lady that is painful to think about, but at least I wasn't married to her and I didn't nearly die having been kicked in the balls by a homeless guy.

It's going all pants

Embarassing Things, all six-like

I once was at a dance club with a friend of mine. The vodka urged us toward the bathroom and we were surprise there wasn't a line, especially since there was a single stall. Friend of mine was checking out her hair in the mirror and I went into the stall. I remembered I was wearing brand new underwear purchased earlier in the day from the Disney store. As I flushed, I called out,

"Hey-- you wanna see my pooh undies?"

And then noticed that friend had left and that I did not know the person standing at the mirror.

Not embarrassing until now

Embarrassing Things, Part Five: some quickies

• I got my car stuck on a planter box four hours after I was issued my first driver's license.


• I once threw up whilst clinging to the side of a moving dumpster that I accidentally dislodged from its place in the parking lot on the first day of a new job.


• I once lied about spilling soda on an adding machine that begat a huge office whodunit that ended with my tearful admission in front of an office full of managers.
• I once called my husband "Mommy" in front of guests.
• I once asked for a ticket to "Edinbur-g", even though I *knew* it was pronounced "Edinbrur-rah".

Hello? Is it me you're looking for?

Way before the internet became ubiquitous, it was known just to geeks, and those of us who knew geeks. It was called the "World Wide Web". This is a story of those heady 9600 baud days when AOL was only giving away 50 free hours and when Yahoo was just a white background and blue, underlined words.



Embarrassing Things, Part Four of Good Lord

In 1993, I worked for a marketing company in San Francisco. I was a low level database administrator, and while I knew my way about some software, I knew precious little about anything else.

My friend in the (1-person) IT department had installed a modem on his machine, and showed me around his favorite USENET groups. I requested that he put one on my machine too.

The next day I came in to my cube armed only with a three-and-a-half floppy disk of free AOL hours and crazy dreams of email addresses and friendly chat rooms. I was not disappointed: there on my desk was a mysterious grey box full of wires, LED wires and hope.

I immediately set out to sign up for AOL (because I could pick my own username, not like CompuServe's impersonal numbers. I spent the next several weeks stealing time to read Friends fanboards and the occasional email from similarly connected buddies.

Until, that is, my boss called me into his office to show me the phone bill. Apparently, I had chosen a dial up number in Santa Rosa which, while still in the 415 area code, was long distance.

Uh, whoops.

Memories of me falling out of bed

Embarrassing Things, Part Three of So Many

OK, so I work in a law firm as a technical help desk-type person. I spend a lot of time on the phone with attorneys and legal secretaries. In this particular instance, I was working with an attorney on a letter she was writing.

After spending maybe five minutes on the phone with her, chatting as I fixed the problem, I stayed on long enough to make sure the letter was coming up as it should. While we were waiting, I happened to make fun of the name of the person who I thought was the recipient of the letter. I can't divulge the exact name, but it was really kind of silly, like, I don't know, 'Jell Fheem').

After I finished giggling, she said "Yes, well. He's sitting right here."

This is actually recycled from the MedicineBalls 1.0. I apologize for my laziness, but seeing as I still work at this law firm, the embarrassment runs deeper.

Embarrassing Things, Part Two of Too Much

Whilst in Toronto for a business conference, I got so drunk the night before the start of the conference that the next morning I threw up. In front of about 20 of my closest co-workers. In the lobby of the fancy hotel where we were all staying.

Awesome.

Proposition 13

I could totally write this whole entry with reasons for me not writing other whole entries in a timely manner, but I respect you—my readers—far too much to do that. Anymore.

Since I see no end in sight for my current malaise, I’m going instead to try— try—to post something short every day. Ideally, this will rid me of my current habit of scribbling stuff furiously in my little book labeled “What I was going to do” with grandiose plans of penning a lengthy entry to stun and amuse.

And we see how well that’s worked.

Instead, I’m going to try to write up tiny one or two sentence entries on the theme of “Embarrassing things I’ve done”. Believe me, I’ve got entries to last the next century, and that doesn’t even include those mistakes of a sexual nature, which I’m not going to write up because I’ve got family who reads this, and—ew, no.

Embarrassing Things, Part One of Many

Once, whilst under this influence of nitrous oxide, I gave a three minute soliloquy full of Things People Say When They’re High*. To the dentist. In answer to his question about the weather.

* "They call them fingers but I’ve never seen them fing...Oh, there they go."