Been There Done That
Currently my new trick is to be able to stand up from sitting in the grass or on the floor. You don't really realize how often you do this until your knees start to be a problem and you find yourself sticking your rear in the air and pushing yourself up with your hands and thinking, "Oh, please, never let anyone take of picture of me doing this and, most of all, please, never let me see that picture if they do." Because I'll kill myself.
Occasionally I find myself looking at myself in the mirror thinking if I knew at sixteen what I would look like at sixty, I would have gone insane the next day and spent the rest of my life sitting in a corner, mumbling. Sometimes it's just plain embarrassing to be old!
When I go on trips with my sixteen-year-old grandson and his friend, as I did this past week, I have resigned myself to the fact that it's funny late at night when I toot when I stand up. You can only resign yourself to having a sense of humor about those things or you can stay home and never go anywhere.
Probably the most embarrassing thing that ever happened to me was one time driving down the highway, eating from a box of candy, holding the box up to get that last little bit of chocolate, a car full of teenagers honked at me and started laughing and pointing. Fortunately their car crashed a minute later and they all suffered brutal bloody deaths. Just kidding.
Is an embarrassing moment only embarrassing when somebody sees it? Don't those residual embarrassment vibes stay in the air, unseen, until they can pounce on you when you do something stupid and send a cold chill down your spine?
Perhaps the best defense is the Well, I'll Never See Those People Again defense. This ploy can be used, say, in a public restroom when someone walks in and finds you checking to see if your nose is dirty. Or, as happened to me recently, someone, a perfect stranger, tapped me on the shoulder and mentioned that the hem of my skirt was tucked into the back of my underwear. Walking through a restaurant. Fabulous. Would it have been better to have never known? Probably not, if just for the sake of the others who had to watch my thighs walk by while eating dessert.
Embarrassment can be handled in a number of ways. Perhaps the most common is to blame the other person for intruding on your privacy or mentioning your fault. It could, for example, be pointed out to my grandson that a polite person merely looks unconcerned when someone in the room toots. It's not all that important to laugh loudly and make sure that everyone knows it wasn't them. It's definitely not critical to mention it the next day several times. Every ten minutes. It wasn't THAT funny.
It's good to be open about things. For example, when you spit on someone eating next to you at a wedding reception or funeral, you might as just as well wipe it off while you continue talking and pretend that's it's normal for people to spit while they're eating and, for pete's sake, don't make that big a deal of it. If you handle it with confidence, you can embarrass them for being annoyed at being spit on and take the moral high ground back long enough to leave them standing there. Boy, that's happened to me a million times, both as the spitter and spittee.
Confidence is all in the face of ridicule. If you slink away, you only compound your fault. You should never let anyone blame you for being stupid in public. "Never explain, never complain" was one of my mother's mottos. Of course, she didn't follow it and it always seemed like a really useless way to deal with a funny situation, but nevertheless, many people adopt this method. You can't go wrong being haughty and stuck up. People might not like you, but they won't laugh at you.
Anyway, what's the fun in being perfect? Embarrassing people have more friends because they just naturally make everyone feel better about themselves.
That's what I want to do here--let you know that it's okay to spit on my shirt while you're talking to me and toot in the back of my car.
Been there, done that, just like it says at the top of the page.
Occasionally I find myself looking at myself in the mirror thinking if I knew at sixteen what I would look like at sixty, I would have gone insane the next day and spent the rest of my life sitting in a corner, mumbling. Sometimes it's just plain embarrassing to be old!
When I go on trips with my sixteen-year-old grandson and his friend, as I did this past week, I have resigned myself to the fact that it's funny late at night when I toot when I stand up. You can only resign yourself to having a sense of humor about those things or you can stay home and never go anywhere.
Probably the most embarrassing thing that ever happened to me was one time driving down the highway, eating from a box of candy, holding the box up to get that last little bit of chocolate, a car full of teenagers honked at me and started laughing and pointing. Fortunately their car crashed a minute later and they all suffered brutal bloody deaths. Just kidding.
Is an embarrassing moment only embarrassing when somebody sees it? Don't those residual embarrassment vibes stay in the air, unseen, until they can pounce on you when you do something stupid and send a cold chill down your spine?
Perhaps the best defense is the Well, I'll Never See Those People Again defense. This ploy can be used, say, in a public restroom when someone walks in and finds you checking to see if your nose is dirty. Or, as happened to me recently, someone, a perfect stranger, tapped me on the shoulder and mentioned that the hem of my skirt was tucked into the back of my underwear. Walking through a restaurant. Fabulous. Would it have been better to have never known? Probably not, if just for the sake of the others who had to watch my thighs walk by while eating dessert.
Embarrassment can be handled in a number of ways. Perhaps the most common is to blame the other person for intruding on your privacy or mentioning your fault. It could, for example, be pointed out to my grandson that a polite person merely looks unconcerned when someone in the room toots. It's not all that important to laugh loudly and make sure that everyone knows it wasn't them. It's definitely not critical to mention it the next day several times. Every ten minutes. It wasn't THAT funny.
It's good to be open about things. For example, when you spit on someone eating next to you at a wedding reception or funeral, you might as just as well wipe it off while you continue talking and pretend that's it's normal for people to spit while they're eating and, for pete's sake, don't make that big a deal of it. If you handle it with confidence, you can embarrass them for being annoyed at being spit on and take the moral high ground back long enough to leave them standing there. Boy, that's happened to me a million times, both as the spitter and spittee.
Confidence is all in the face of ridicule. If you slink away, you only compound your fault. You should never let anyone blame you for being stupid in public. "Never explain, never complain" was one of my mother's mottos. Of course, she didn't follow it and it always seemed like a really useless way to deal with a funny situation, but nevertheless, many people adopt this method. You can't go wrong being haughty and stuck up. People might not like you, but they won't laugh at you.
Anyway, what's the fun in being perfect? Embarrassing people have more friends because they just naturally make everyone feel better about themselves.
That's what I want to do here--let you know that it's okay to spit on my shirt while you're talking to me and toot in the back of my car.
Been there, done that, just like it says at the top of the page.
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