Ready the Crimson Faces!

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.