My Top Five Embarrassing Moments
Okay, this is a challenge, mainly because I’ve successfully suppressed most of these moments to enable myself to move forward. But as others have been able to dredge up some of their less-savoury moments, I will attempt to do the same.
1. This is only number one on my list because it is the first one I can recall. When I was in 4th grade and living in Malaysia, a friend and I were playing in some trees on top of a grading next to our school sports oval. My friend leapt from one branch, swung off another, landed on his feet and slid down the side of the grade in front of two girls who were in our class. It was very impressive. I wanted to do the same but when I reached out and grabbed the same branch, it broke under my weight and I fell. The fall snapped both my wrists, bruised my knees, and gravel-rashed my legs and arms. Suffice to say, the girls were so impressed they ran away screaming.
2. I fancied myself as a cartoonist as a child. I was pretty good at drawing reasonable caricatures of people. Anyway, I was in a class and drew a pretty good drawing of another boy in the class. I showed it to my friend who passed it to the boy in front of him, much to my dismay. The drawing was passed back and forth between my classmates until the teacher caught one of them and demanded the drawing. When she asked who drew it, I thought she was going to praise me. Instead, she booted me out of the class for writing something ‘very crude’ on the picture, which I hadn’t done. I was standing outside when the vice-principal of the school came by and ended up with four of the best in front of the class.
3. Running late for a post-lunch meeting some years ago, I burst into the large meeting room, having run all the way from my office on the other side of the Hospital Campus where I still work. As I came through the door, however, the meeting went quiet and at the precise moment, I inadvertently let one rip. It was long, loud and, in normal circumstances, would have been very private. The whole meeting looked at me and all I could do was apologise and retreat back out the door. Incidentally, I had got the day of the meeting wrong and the room was filled with young nurses in the middle of an orientation. I still feel embarrassed about this when I see some of the nurses around the hospital.
4. Many years ago, a band I was in was supporting one of my favourite Australian bands of the time. We were all excited to be doing this gig, which was at a large University Refectory and in front of about 600 people. The band had rehearsed a lot for this show and we had a very good sound check prior to the gig. We walked onstage feeling particularly confident. The singer introduced the first song, which started with my guitar. The drummer counted me in and I hit the first chord… Nothing happened. I checked the volume on the guitar but still nothing happened. I ran back to my amplifier and checked to make sure I hadn’t turned it down or off. Everything looked fine. In a blind panic, I pulled leads out and put them back in, turned things off and on but not a sound issued from the amp. By this stage, the audience was starting to get a little restless. Then out of nowhere (well, actually side stage but anyway) the lead guitarist of the main act and someone I’d admired for years, wheeled out his amp, plugged it in, and then asked me for the lead to my guitar. He turned the amp on and finally, I was able to start the song. I think I spent the entire set looking at my feet. My band mates never let me forget it. When I got my amp back home, the first thing I did was plug it in to test it. It worked fine.
5. I’m naturally clumsy. It is not something I work at, it just happens. Over the years, I’ve managed to embarrass myself often because of my natural ability. These days, I take extra care where ever I go and have managed to reduce instances of clumsiness to a minimum. However, years ago, I was out with some friends doing my damndest to impress a girl I was particulary besotted with. We were sitting at a round table which was filled with drinks of all sorts. Trying to look debonair, I leant forward to the table in order to place my elbows on it so I could lean closer to the object of my affection. My elbows missed the table and instead, I somehow hit it with my chin and managed to spill just about every drink on the table all over the poor girl. Apart from having to replace every drink, I could never look her in the face properly again.
So there you go, that’s my five. The funny thing is, the more I thought about this, the more moments occurred to me. What a stock of repressed memories I have LOL. I choose to tag Sally Jacobs, Nicki G and Serenity, if they haven’t been tagged already.