Murphy’s law

When I was in college, during the one cold winter month of the year, I walked eight blocks (eight blocks!!) to class through the heavily populated campus only to then notice that my skirt was tucked into my tights.

Mortified, I immediately stepped off the sidewalk with my open palm covering my behind and walked backwards towards a brick wall, stepping on a well-manicured garden in the process.

I smiled at passers-by as if I was simply waiting for a friend while I frantically put both my hands behind my back (and under my backpack) to rearrange my skirt, embarrassed beyond belief that I had crossed three major intersections with my entire rear end exposed and now I wished I was dead.

You’d think that five years later, I’d have a more mature reaction to embarrassing moments. But no! I wouldn’t dare be mature about anything that causes me to lose face, haha.
No, but really.

So, it’s not surprising that after messing up the dance routine at an aerobics class — and THREE MIRRORS that line the room capturing my un-coordination — I left in the middle of the class and hysterically cried in the Gold’s Gym bathroom.

“I looked like a moose!” I cried to my twin sister, Joy, after she fetched me from the stall.
She had gotten all of the aerobic steps correct, which added to my frustration.

Everyone had stepped up on their little platform and threw their arms left while I stayed on the ground and went right.
I then spun around in a circle, but no, we weren’t on the spin yet. When I realized this, I stepped on my own feet and almost face planted into the floor.

“Horrible!” I wailed.

Once Joy convinced me to leave the bathroom, I made a beeline for the exit, pointing my red face downward in case any of the other 20 people in the class recognized me.
“I’m never coming back here again!” I said.
“I’ll just say it was me,” Joy said.

It’s inevitable that at some point in your life, you’re gonna look dumb.
No one can breeze through life being cool all day, every day.

(Yes, even you, Emma Watson! Hermonie Granger would have run to her little dormitory and cried all night long over this!)

I wonder what the lesson is for dealing with embarrassing moments. Perseverance? Courage? Plain bad luck?

I get regularly embarrassed everytime I drop a kickball during our weekly games.
I routinely sing the wrong chorus in songs, get honked at in traffic and make newborn babies cry just by holding them (thanks, kid).
(Oh, and embarrassing moments involving alcohol deserve a whole separate posting.)

-One time, I was racing a friend on the beach and my bikini bottoms tied on the sides and I pumped my arms when I was running and the bottoms — you guessed it — got untied right as I was crossing the finish line. I was completely naked on the bottom for all to see.
Horrified, I ran into the ocean bottomless, everyone laughing as I cried alone with the fish.

-Once, when I was just starting out as a reporter, I accidentally wrote in the paper that the Mayor’s name was Carol. It was Carl. He was not pleased.

-I was on a date in college when I bit into a lug nut that was in my salad.
Really, I couldn’t make this up.

I thought it was a nut (go figure!) but when I couldn’t bite all the way into it, I pulled it out of my mouth, all covered in green-salad spit.
“What the---?” I said as I put the metal piece on my bread plate. We both stared at it.

“How is everything?” the server asked right then. Perfect timing. My face was bright red.

“Actually, she found this lug nut in her salad,” my date said. I turned purple.

“Oh, so you don’t want lug nuts in your salad?” she asked jokingly, and took the plate away.
I don’t think I said two words after that.
She came back with a fresh salad and said the plates are chilled in a refrigerator and “a screw must have fallen off from the inside of the fridge and onto the plate.” I was still purple.

Even though I got two free meals for my “inconvenience,” I'm too embarrassed to redeem them.
Hi, I’m the one that chomped on a lug nut! No bill for me, please!
Ugh, I’d die.

So far today, nothing embarrassing has happened. But it’s still early.

I haven’t run into a council member at the grocery store while holding, female products and frantically and obviously trying to hide it behind my back (again).
I didn’t run over a seagull with my car on a busy road nowhere near the beach (again).
I’m not even dressed like a meatball.

But, again, it’s still early.

-Jenny