Phone it in Friday: embarrassment and failure

I'm sure nothing would thrill Ashley (and us) more than if you'd share some of your very own embarrassment and failure with us. Let's laugh together. At you.

brush your shoulders off

As Kat! mentioned yesterday, I had a really hard time narrowing down what I wanted to write about this week. Like Kat, I am clumsy and fall down a lot (usually as a result of drinking) PLUS ALSO I'm never really embarrassed about the things I should be. People tend to think I embarrass easily because my face turns red ALL THE TIME. I don't, though. I SHOULD, but I don't, because when you fall down as often as I do, you learn to just brush it off.

So I could have written about the time I fell into a men's room or the time I got in a bar fight because of my mom or the time I fell out of my loft in college and didn't remember it or the time I fell down on my birthday in the bar's parking lot and didn't remember it or the time Heidi's boyfriend dropped me on my head because I refused to get off someone's porch and he tried to carry me inside (but I don't remember it).

However, these are some of the rare times I've actually felt embarrassed. At least for a little bit.

1. Got caught stealin'

This one time? We were in a bar in Columbus? And I saw this sign on the wall that I liked. So I took it down and folded it up and put it in my purse. One minute later, I was approached by one of the bartenders.

Bartender: Did you just steal a sign off the wall?
Me: . . . no?
Bartender: Um, my manager saw you.
Me: He didn't.
Bartender: He said you put it in your purse.
Me: Weird.
Bartender: Can I see inside your purse?
Me: Um. I don't know.
Bartender: Please leave.

And then we left. Because I stole a sign. And then I was all, "WHATEVER, we were leaving anyway, suckers!"

FAIL

2. Adventures in Babysitting

The first time I babysat, I thought I was prepared. I'd taken a Red Cross First Aid Babysitter Extraordinaire class. I knew how to Heimlich the shit out of a baby. I knew how to change a diaper, prepare a bottle, properly support a babies head, you name it. Unfortunately, I was babysitting for my cousins, and while one was a baby, the other was a toddler and needed to eat real food. I could heat up the bottle OH HELL YES but I ran into some trouble with the real food. My aunt had left a can of ravioli on the counter for dinner, along with this strange contraption that I guessed was to open the can. I picked it up. What IS this thing, I thought, and then used my superior deductive reasoning and realized it was a can opener! However, I had never used a manual can opener before, because we only had an electric one at home (wah wah) so I FREAKED OUT. I tried to use it. I really did. And then I started banging the sides of the can with it, hoping I could poke a hole in the side. Eventually, so my poor cousin wouldn't starve to death, I called my parents and my dad came over. To open a can for me.

This is still a hot topic of conversation during many family get-togethers.

Also, this other time I was babysitting my dad's coworker's daughter, and we were playing that game where one person puts their hands on top of yours, you try to hit them, and they try NOT to get hit. Well. We were playing it in front of a glass coffee table, she pulled her hands back, lost her balance, and fell right through the coffee table. She was fine, but it scared the hell out of her. It also made quite the mess, and since I didn't think I could get away with just covering it with a blanket, when her parents came home, I was vacuuming up the tiny glass shards while their daughter cried and cried on the sofa. I was not invited back, I don't think.

FAIL

3. Brass monkey, that funky monkey

Once upon a time, some good friends were in town, and as is often the case, we celebrated by drinking profusely at a variety of bars (my parents were even at one of them). At the last bar, I celebrated by convincing everyone to buy Jello shots and then I took too many of them and danced with an old man (I mean OLD) and then on the walk home, I fell down in a McDonald's parking lot in front of a man and his son in the drive thru and then I tried to run home AND break into someone's condo. When Heidi tried to tell me the condo I was breaking into did not, in fact, belong to our friend, I turned into a belligerent four-year-old (as often happens when I've reached the drunken point of no return) and I refused to believe her, so she had to physically drag me away. The next morning was SUPER FUN because I'd forgotten all of this, but no one else had.

FAIL

4. E.T. phone home

There is a newspaper called the KO Times in my town, delivered weekly (whether you're a subscriber or not). In each paper, they ask people around town to answer a question, take their pictures, and print their answers next to their pictures.

One night at work (local library), I was innocently enjoying my break when some lady walked into the breakroom. There were a few of us in there, but when she asked this question: What would you do if aliens landed on Earth? I was the first to answer. With this: I would ask them to take me home with them, and make me their pet. I didn't know who she was. But when someone gives me an opportunity to say something stupid, I can't exactly turn it down, you know?

Anyway, then she was all, "can I take your picture?" and I was like, "um, this is unorthodox," but I let her do it anyway, and then she told me I'd be in the paper the next day kthnxbai. And when the paper finally came out, everyone I knew cut it out and hung it up somewhere. One of my coworkers even decorated my picture, by drawing a dog collar around my neck and a little food bowl next to my floating head. The picture is long since lost (I hope), but here is my own representation:

EPIC FAIL

Oops, I did it again.

Jennie! mentioned earlier in the week that she was having a hard time picking exactly which of many embarrassing moments to document for Ashley this week, and I have to say I'm having pretty close to the same problem. You see, I'm super clumsy and I drink a lot and so NATURALLY I fall down and do stupid things and trouble make and all the stuff that posts about embarrassment are made of, but--and here's the problem--I'm not embarrassed by any of it. In fact, I should really have gotten any number of my friends to write this post for me, about what an embarrassment I am to THEM.

And then I thought I might copy Abigail! and write about all the sad sack pining over boys who never once gave me the time of day, or worse, gave me the time of day and disappeared forever and ever amen, but that would require copying Heather! Anne! and flipping through old high school and college journals and meh, boys are overrated anyway.

So I sort of met everyone round about the middle somewhere and mined the i hate kit kats media empire archives for these gems.

This is about the time I got drunk and ripped my pants scaling some construction scaffolding, and then ditched my handsome boyfriend so I could hang out with his friends all weekend.

And here is the photographic proof.

This is the time when I went to a Super Bowl party and only knew, like, two people there and got into a screaming match with one of the idiot guests and then later we were doing eXtreme bike tricks in the living room and Dave smashed through the glass coffee table and we tried to cover it all up with a blanket before running off to a bar.

This is about the time I (loudly) announced to the entire New Orleans art community that I had no idea what an uncircumcised penis looks like.

This is about shenanigans across the pond, which totally included this:


(I do not remember this.)

This is about the time I got into a fight with a banana.

This and this and this and this are about some of the crazy ass shit that comes out of my mouth.

This is about shenanigans in Syracuse.

Enjoy.

first and last mistakes

I don't fall for guys very easily. Don't believe me? I could name the guys I've liked--all of them, ever--in short, rapid succession starting from the sixth grade to the present and be finished before you finished reading this sentence. That's INCLUDING all the guys on the "quiz" I passed to my friend Miriam during church when I was 14. See, Miriam didn't like anyone in our youth group which seemed IMPOSSIBLE to me because I liked THREE guys. So I generously decided that she could have one of my three to like, all she had to was take a multiple-choice quiz akin to something I may have read in Seventeen magazine. So, there were those three and about twice that many since.

***

I've liked him for two years. Each continuing year I like him, he gets older and I get older and soon I will be in high school at the same time as him and then maybe he will love me back! Or maybe I'll keep signing his name after mine! My parents go out of town, so I get to spend the weekend at his house. His sister, my best friend, would be devastated to know that I consider it his house and not hers, but I brush these guilty thoughts away. One day in the future when we're all related we'll laugh about this. She'll be happy for us.

At the end of the long three day weekend, I sneak a note into his tennis shoes by the back door. We've spent afternoons watching TV. He's controlled the remote the whole time, been a total asshole to his sister, and made jokes that I laugh at even though I shouldn't. He doesn't do any of this for my benefit. I am a child to him and I have no idea. So the note takes a familiar tone. I thank him for a great weekend. I tell him I'm so happy we're friends. I fold it in half, in half, and half again so that it fits in his shoe. I'm nervous to deliver it, but not ashamed.

***

Her: I don't really think I can even describe all the ways in which I love him. Every time I try, I cut myself off with more gushing.

Me: Yeah, that's about right.

Her: It's just I LOVE HIM. Seriously, oh my god, you don't understand.

Me: No, I do. Remember David Cook?

It's been a particularly dry spell. My heart got broken (years ago) and ever since then, I've had significant trouble meeting someone I like enough to like, let alone date. My stupid boundaries and my awesome friends are both obvious reasons for this. So, I turned to celebrities. David Cook took a little while to grow on me, but by the time he was in the top seven American Idol contestants, I was reading everything there was to know about him on the internet and swooning and everything he said or did.

He would come on screen and I would turn to Carolyn and exhale, "I love him." I really did. I really felt a deep, emotional connection and I really thought that I could be in a relationship with him. The love faded when I had to quit reading the David Cook Fan Livejournal because it wasn't a positive use of time. And I thought I could write about it now at laugh at myself, but rethinking it all through and reremembering all those things I read about him, all those Facebook pictures people had mined of him, all those moments I thought I might find love again don't seem so crazy. I guess that's embarassing: I've only ever liked or loved ten guys and one of them was on American Idol.

***

The first and latest men I've loved nicely represent a whole love history of embarrassment and failure. You're either a douchebag, on TV, don't know I exist, out of my league, only go for girls who sing, work with me, live far away, or come with a serious case of dysfunction. But aren't you glad to know that you're one of a select few? You have something that I find inexplicably attractive even though I shouldn't, and that is very rare.

I give you a simple management suggestion in a professional context, and I get back the second half of a Judy Blume novel.

Ashley wants to hear about embarrassment and failure, so this weekend I went digging around and found my old high school journals. I opened to a random page, assuming each entry would be equally mortifying. I was correct. I've redacted the names because you never know when some old classmate is going to come a-Googling.

November 30, 1994

Today was a very very very very very bad day. First of all... well not first of all but most important of all because it's the most important thing right now is basketball practice was so horrible. I have worked so hard to remember all the plays from the varsity playbook but I am still only a freshman and the only freshman on the varsity team which I think people forget and it's why they start yelling at me if I mess up one small thing. I heard them say I was coach's pet, but if that is true why is he screaming at me too???? Sometimes I think I would be better off just playing on the JV team where I could stand out and people wouldn't shout at me so much because I would be a star which is more the role I am used to. Then I got in trouble at practice for cussing, but not because coach heard me but because [Redacted] ran her big fat mouth and told him. She thinks she's the perfect little Christian because she never cusses, but I know she's probably giving [Redacted] blow jobs all the time. So who's the real Christian huh??? Like our preacher's daughter is always messing around with her boyfriend and I know because I saw them when I was babysitting her brother. Gross!!! After practice coach said maybe he was going to take some of the varsity warm-ups away and duh he was talking about me and everyone knew it. If he takes away my warm-up and makes me play JV I am going to be so humiliated. I will go to a different school I swear to God. I could never face anyone I know ever again. I wanted to call to talk to Amy about it tonight but my sister is ALWAYS on the phone with her boyfriend and mom would not make her get off even though these are real high school things I am trying to deal with and Jennifer thinks she is so great just because she is top dog still in middle school. Well good luck when you get to high school. I have been here two years so I already know!!! I am so hungry but I cannot even show my face even downstairs for dinner because if mom or dad asks me about my day I will probably start crying and tell them I am probably getting kicked of varsity and I know they will be devastated. It is all on me now. [Redacted] says I should start wearing a rubberband around my wrist so I can flick myself hard when I cuss that way I will stop. Maybe I don't want to stop. Maybe one day I will be point guard and she will be on the bench and then who will be making the rules about cussing at practice? Probably me!!!

If I had a time machine I would go back to 1994 and punch little Heather! Anne! in the mouth. Then I'd teach her how to really swear.