What is the most personally embarrassing thing you can imagine?

Do you remember cotton stockings and garter belts? When I was about six and in the first grade, I must have been growing, so the garter belt had too much pressure on it.. All of a sudden, I stood up, looked down, and my stockings and garter belt were around my ankles!

BBB- Funny story about dentures. Years ago, I worked in a home that catered to mentally ill people. Many of them were elderly. One morning as I came in the door, the owner of the home motioned to me to stand by the door of the dining room, and shuttle people away from a body. Seemed that a resident had dropped dead in the dining room. What was so bizarre, was that as he fell, his dentures flew out of his mouth, and were lying on the floor, about 10 feet in front of him.

Winter slushy day. Brand new dress shoes. First job. Super posh office. My visit was anticipated. I had that extra bounce in my step, I felt good. All eyes were on me, as I strutted in.....polished marble floor....shhhlliiip....floating...there is the ceiling...flash.....landed on my back.

One time when I was going for a swin in the Atlantic Ocean at the Outer Banks of North Carolina, the surf was rough, and I saw a huge wave approaching and tried to outrun it. It crashed down on me and tore off the top half of my bathing suit. The beach was rather crowded, and I felt terribly embarassed.

The very first one is still vivid in my memory. It was in first grade and I was in a school play, playing one of the lead roles. It was Christmas time and we were re-enacting A Christmas Story. There was this ugly faux red brick scenery, we were in gawdy pajamas and stocking caps and in the final scene all I had to do was hang my Christmas stocking on the faux red brick fireplace. The problem was that the faux brick was made out of thick cardboard and our stockings were to be pinned to the fireplace with paperclips. Our stockings got tangled together when the paperclips decided to mingle and get to know each other. There we stood on stage; our faces growing more red as each second passed, the snickering from the audience growing louder; fiddling with the paperclips silently begging them to release their grip of each other. Minutes passed. Finally one of us had the bright idea to just rip the clips from the stockings. We then ran over, poked a hole into the faux brick with the end of a paperclip and hung our stockings on the paperclip and ran off stage in tears.


My life has been full of embarrassing moments, each still just as vivid in memory as the first.

Letting a good one rip in polite company.

I recall a particular incident that was quite embarrassing to a girl I knew back in the day. A bunch of us had walked a few blocks from a house party and continued partying at a local nightclub. Afterward we convened in the parking lot and carried on a drunken discussion (about a dozen of us) and tried to decide what to do next. We stood there for quite some time and soon the parking lot was almost empty, only one solitary car in the middle. The area was quite lit up, with no bushes or places of shelter a person could seek out if one needed to use and emergency bathroom.

And that was the problem Sue encountered. She discovered she had to go to the bathroom in the most urgent way and looked around, panicking, trying to locate an area to relieve herself. The building was locked, and, like I said, there were no reasonable spots to hide. All of a sudden she decides the solitary car in the lot is her only option and she races to it, goes around the far side, and ducks down to do her business.

The car drives off.

I can still hear her screams.

It was my birthday, and my husband gave no sign of acknowledgement. I came home from work that night to our shotgun house. It was dark in the dining room, but the llight was on in the kitchen and I could see him, loading the dishwasher. I put on my most sarcastic manner and walked down the hall into the dining room singing "Happy effing birthday to me, Hapy effing birthday to me." Just as I got to the dining room, the lights came on and there were all my friends and neighbors, includidng the minister of our church. I blushed so much I thought my hair would catch fire. No more surprise parties for me.

The most embarrasing thing that ever happened to me was waking up to another guy after a night's extremely heavy drinking at the party to end all parties when I was 19.

And then I remembered what we had done 8 hours earlier.

It turned out he was gay, had fancied me from early on in the evening and had steadily got me drunk over the course of the party before finally seducing me when I was as drunk as a skunk.

To say I was mortified the next morning is an understatement of biblical proportions. I had never had any gay experiences before, nor since.

One of those one-off experiences of life I guess.

I can laugh about it now.....just about

My first trip to italy. Well, our first trip to italy. I hadn't had any vacation of more than 4 days in, oh, eight years, and this trip would be a month long. I planned it over many hours and days of guide book reading, always consulting with my husband, that being before internet searches came into my life. Planned it carefully re where we would go, re cities and general areas, but purposely not carefully re places to stay, past the day our plane would land, so our meals and albergo stays would be spontaneous, though I still studied at length about possible places. To say I was immersed in italy data is to put it mildly.

So, we get off the plane in Milan, last off since we were tired from having missed in New York a connecting plane to Rome (our destination) and many hours of airport misery.

I hand the guy in the official looking suit my passport. This is expired, madam, he said. I said no, it isn't! He showed me. Sure enough, my husband's then new passport was for ten years, but mine, issued earlier had been for five. I turned purple with embarrassment and fear. Another man in more a more official suit, more gold buttons, more badges, came out and gave me the third degree. I practically fainted with dismay.

In the end, they let us go, and told us to go to the american embassy when we
got to Rome. What a relief.

This reminds me of the time on another trip that we were caught by the bus police (previously used tickets, hub's great idea). That was embarrassing, but not as much as the passport debacle.