The following "moments" are a few of the times I experienced embarrassment.
1. I once hosted a dinner party with ten to twelve guests. The food turned out well and I thought the conversations were delightful. As the last couple was getting ready to leave and we were saying our good-byes, I thanked Dave and Sue for attending and told them I would love to have them over again very soon. Sue looked at me with a very sweet blushed face and asked me if I would mind calling her Jan since that was her real name. I had gone through the whole evening calling her Sue and did not have a clue that I had her name wrong. She was very forgiving in that we have been friends since that day and our friendship has gone on for some thirty years.
2. After our daughter was born, I went through the usual sleepless nights that happen when attending a newborn. I did not realize how tired I was until I fell asleep during a televised lecture at church one weekend. My husband knew how much I needed a rest and chose to let me sleep. He did, however, tell me later after I encountered a lot of funny looks from fellow church members that I not only slept through the presentation, but I also snored up a storm that could be heard throughout the building.
3. When I was in high school, I thought it would be great to go from a brunette to a blond by way of the do-it-yourself hair dye in the local store. My hair turned out white blond and I loved it. After a few months of being a blond, I realized that it was a lot of work to keep the blond hair up and decided to go back to being a brunette. I went out and bought a box of dark hair dye. After a quick application, once again I was a brunette. The color looked good in the mirror at home and I was excited to see what my friends at school would think of the change. The next day when I walked into my science class, under the fluorescent lighting, someone yelled out "she's a witch" and the Halloween jokes began. It became evident when they began to point in my direction that they were speaking of me. I didn't realize that you are supposed to put filler on your hair when going from blond to brunette and the lighting brought out a dark green tint that I didn't know was there.
4. When I was in the eighth grade, my cousin gave us a bag of used clothing. My sisters and I went through the bag and picked out the clothing that we each liked. I picked out a blouse that matched some of my skirts and was really excited to wear it to school and show it off. When we arrived at school, I went to my locker, took off my coat and hung it up as usual, all this while talking about anything and everything. My sister had a horrified look on her face while I continued to talk. She told me to look down. When I looked down, I saw that my blouse had come off with my coat and I was standing in the school hallway in my bra. It turned out that the reason my cousin passed the blouse to us was because the buttonholes were too large for the buttons and the blouse kept coming undone.
5. When I first learned to drive, my father taught me how to check the car fluids and fill what was low. Many years later when my husband, daughter, and I lived in South Florida, I had a car that used oil. One day at the grocery store, I decided to buy some oil because I didn't think it had been checked for a while. I decided to take a shortcut on checking the oil dipstick and just put oil in the engine. I was sure that the car needed oil because when I removed the cap where you put the oil in, I didn't see any oil. I proceeded to pour at least four quarts of oil into the car engine. I was so proud of myself for not bugging my husband to do this job. I jumped in the car and set out for home. As I was driving out of the parking lot my daughter looked out the back window and yelled, "mama, I think the car is on fire!" There was so much smoke pouring out of the back of the car that I couldn't see anything behind me but black smoke. My husband drove the car to a repair shop the next day while I followed in his car. I could see the smoke rising from that car even as my husband got three to four blocks ahead of me.
6. We lived out in the country at one time and it took nearly forty-five minutes to get to the nearest grocery store. I would go into town each week for groceries and bring my little daughter with me. It seemed that every time we got into the grocery store, she would have to use the bathroom. On one of these occasions, I was trying to help her in the bathroom while trying to balance coats, purse and an over sized checkbook. I dropped the checkbook into the toilet. It was clean water but it was a bit embarrassing to hand a damp check to the girl at checkout and try to explain why the check was damp. This was before check cards were used and I had no other way to pay for my groceries.
7. When I was confirmed in the Lutheran Church, my parents gave a party and invited all of our friends and relatives. The basement was set up with food and tables. At the end of my meal I decided to have a piece of chocolate cake with chocolate frosting. This was one of my first times to wear high heals. As I traveled up the stairs with my cake, I tripped and landed right on the chocolate cake. My white dress was never the same after that.
8. I was eager to do my best at my first job after college. I was hired as an executive secretary and took my job very seriously. One of my duties was sorting the mail for the various employees in my department. I did not recognize one of the names on the envelope and asked my boss where this piece mail should go. His reply was "send it to Forest Lawn." I did not know that Forest Lawn was a cemetery and I proceeded to ask him for the address.
9. Shortly after marrying my husband we took a trip across country to visit his parents. While we were there my mother-in-law asked my husband to go through some old boxes and take what he wanted. I only knew my husband for a few months before we were married and going through the boxes showed me a side of him I knew nothing about. There were articles of him playing basketball and going to state tournaments. He graduated Valedictorian of his class. He was president of his class for most of his high school career. I was so impressed with all of his accomplishments and told him I didn't know I had married such a star. That is when he told me that he was so good in sports that his picture was on the Wheaties cereal box. I believed him and I kept asking him why he didn't save a copy of the box. After a few days, he confessed that he was kidding around with me.
10. Growing up in the motor city (Detroit) I definitely have seen all sorts of crazy driving. It was not until my daughter was in high school that my patience snapped and the following incident took place. Everyday I would drive my daughter to and from high school because we did not have bus service to our home. One evening after picking up my daughter, I was pulling out of the high school parking lot and one of the students got behind my van. He started tailgating me, beeping his horn, and making some nasty hand gestures. The student that was making all the noise behind me was one of the worst kids in the high school. I endured the noise as I pulled out of the parking lot and it continued as I sat at one of the traffic lights at a cross street. Finally, I could be patient no longer. I rolled down the window of the van. Put the car in park and hung half way out of the window. I started yelling back at the kid, honking my horn, and returned the nasty hand gesture with the words, "back off you, I was using this gesture before you even had hands." As I returned to the driver's seat, and settled down, I looked in my rear-view mirror only to see the car behind the student that was bothering me. It was my husband with a couple of his employees in a company car. They had been at the school that day to evaluate some of the cabling. My husband just shook his head when he came home from work that evening.
What can I say in conclusion..... I will leave the conclusion to the reader.
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