This first post is dedicated to Ande Payne, because she initiated the thought of blogging, which I appreciate because sometimes I write things that I think someone ought to see. Words never read are sad little things.
Replaying for me in my mind recently have been some of my more famous embarrassments.
-I once sneezed snot all over my hands and face while sitting with a group of early-morning seminary students about to eat breakfast.
-In third grade I delayed visiting the bathroom until it was too late. Standing at the head of the class at my teacher's desk, my pants flooded. Mrs. Foresburg looked confused. I was pissed.
-Running at seven-year-old top speed, I smashed directly into a concrete pole while a goose simultaneously laid an egg on my forehead.
-With smirking faces, two fashionable girls in a higher grade approached me as an eighth-grader while clad in my embarrassing running shorts in front of a large crowd at a track meet, claiming to have met me at "summer camp" the year before. I had never been to anything of the sort. I didn't know what to say. "I don't remember you," I said. They wouldn't stop. Their large and muscled guy friends strutted up and said things. I felt trapped and I knew the whole world was looking at me like a doomed gladiator. I walked away and sat by myself with them still shouting. I looked up at the sky and envisioned planes carrying atomic bombs from of the clouds, long falls, explosions, and me sitting safely because of paid tithing. I came in last in each of my runs.
The first three were embarrassing anomalies, but the fourth was a way of life. Luckily I haven't had many truly embarrassing moments in a long time, mostly because I don't care as much what people think about me (emphasizing the AS MUCH part):
-Adam Pingel and I stood next to each other a particular day last semester for an improv rehearsal. The group was about to play a counting game that required us to grasp hands. As we did, our director began making a few more preliminary comments and everyone dropped their hands to wait. Adam and I had inexplicably linked fingers, so that as we shifted our attention away from the game, our hands remained gently interlocked. We stood for a solid minute in unconscious romance before some unseen force whispered in both of our ears---we looked at one another and exploded into laughing. So awkward. So funny.
