I’m not going to go first, but I will go (because I have a few)
These are things you did/said years ago that caused no other harm but than embarrass you, if only in your own mind. And years later, it only takes one word/sound/aroma to set off that memory and renew the internal embarrassment.
C’mon. I can’t be the only one this has happened to…???
At a Strapping Young Lad, Fear Factory, Soilwork and Darkane show…
(SYL are from the Vancouver area, by the way, a fact which is very widely known to anyone around here who likes metal at all.)
Someone was announcing something, and I forget exactly what, but they said “and one of these bands is from right around the Vancouver area!” and everyone cheered, and the two guys next to me were like “What? Who’s from the Vancouver area?” “I don’t know!”
And I turned to them and said, “Strapping Young Lad!!!”
And they said, “Uh… we know.”
:smack: I didn’t realise they were kidding.
This is why I don’t have any friends. Either that or they were very good actors. I slinked a couple of steps back and hid behind my boyfriend.
This bothers me far too much.
I’m sure I’ve got many more and reading more of the thread, once it gets underway, will bring them out!
I once, very stupidly, in front of a very nice girl, mixed up the Huns and the Phoenicians. This was a long time ago now, I have since become a wise old geezer with an education and a pretty extensive knowledge of history, but still… for some reason, it still bugs the daylights out of me whenever I think of it, which is way too often. See, this thread, for instance, made it all come flooding back again.
Yeah, I know. Get over it already. But for some bizarre reason I just can’t.
ok - here’s one of mine
8th grade - on a date with cute guy. took me to see Soylent Green. Afterwards we went to the concession stand (that was the dinner part of movie & dinner - he was only 14 after all) and the clerk asked if we wanted any hot dogs.
I went on a mini rant something like “omingawd! I can’t believe you’re asking if we want to eat anything! Have you seen this movie? I may neer eat again!” etc etc etc. Cute boy ordered 2 hot dogs. I looked at him, lowered my head, and told the clerk I’d have 2 also. (slink, slink, slink, slink) Everytime someone mentions that movie, I relive that moment
ok - here’s one of mine
8th grade - on a date with cute guy. took me to see Soylent Green. Afterwards we went to the concession stand (that was the dinner part of movie & dinner - he was only 14 after all) and the clerk asked if we wanted any hot dogs.
I went on a mini rant something like “omingawd! I can’t believe you’re asking if we want to eat anything! Have you seen this movie? I may neer eat again!” etc etc etc. Cute boy ordered 2 hot dogs for himself. I looked at him, lowered my head, and told the clerk I’d have 2 also. (slink, slink, slink, slink) Everytime someone mentions that movie, I relive that moment
if this double posted - I apologize
Oh, God. I have a whole reel-to-reel of The Weird One’s Most Embarrassing Moments playing on a loop in my brain. Thank God some of them have faded with time and as I realized that everyone has stupid brain fart moments, and nobody judges me for them but myself. Thing is, I have no problem “embarrassing” myself on purpose - taking public transit to work dressed like a pirate, for instance - it’s the tiny little mistakes that everyone makes that haunt me for years.
Oh, I’ve got one. When I was very young and clueless as to music, I was living in TN…I had only two friends because everyone was rather prejudiced against non-whites. Anyway, one of my two friends was a cute guy. (This background to let you know that this friend’s opinion was very important to me.) And one day he asked me if I liked Salt N Peppa. (I think that’s how you spell it.) Well, I thought “Why is he asking me if I like condiments” and went on to explain how I liked it on omelettes and sometimes soup and…he gave me a weird look and said, “No, I meant the band.” :smack: I was twelve years old and still haven’t forgotten that one.
Or how about…I was a fairly bright kid, always reading the encyclopedia and stuff. But for some reason I’d missed a fairly fundamental lesson. My mom put ice in a drink, and I piped up “When it melts, won’t it overflow?” And all my family made fun of me for weeks afterward. “You’re so smart and you don’t know that it’s already taken up the space it needs?” D’oh!
I’m sure there’s more.
I could have written this post myself. Sometimes, late at night, I dwell on my Embarassing Moments, beating myself up for them. I have a lot of regrets. Sometimes I wish I could go back and re-do my life correctly, but I know that my mistakes and the paths I took made me the person I am today. Who knows what I would be like if I had done things differently?
I had a really close female friend that lived right down the street from me. Since 5th grade we’d hung out together, always as buddies. One day, in high school, I took it in my head to walk down, knock on her door and just blurt out that I really thought of her as more than a friend and I just wanted her to know that. From her “polite” reaction, I knew right off that it was a one-way street.
Thankfully, she never spoke of it again, we continued to be friends, but I have never gotten over the embarassment.
This is not about me but my husband who I was dating at the time and one of the reasons I fell in love with him. We went out to dinner one night at an Outback Steakhouse. Now in a small town as we were in, this was borderline exotic. He had gone to the restaurant before we dated and went on and on about the weird exotic Australian fruit that they had in the salads. I was intrigued, never having gone there before, so I really did not know what to expect. We ordered our steaks and had our salads brought out. I looked in the salad but did not find anything unusual or exotic so he looked through his and proudly fished out one of the exotic fruits and displayed it speared on his fork like a prize hunting kill. I could not help it. I tried hard to control it but finally collapsed into giggles. His confused look destroyed any semblance of control I attempted to attain through the giggles…
“What?” he asks.
I am still trying to gain control of breathing and all between giggles.
“What?! What is wrong?”, he asks again.
After a few minutes, I gain control to advise him, as gently as I could considering the laughing fit I had in his direction, that the “weird exotic Australian fruit” was actually . . .
a cucumber.
Now this is one of the reasons he impressed me. Instead of getting mad about me laughing at him, or making up an excuse or even the “I was just seeing if I could pull one over on you” BS, he looks at the lone bit of cucumber displayed ever so proudly on his fork, looks at me, looks at the cucumber again, pops it in his mouth, starts to laugh at himself. Very humbly accepting the “Well, I can be an idiot, too, sometimes.” banner that gets placed in flashing neon overhead during times as such.
Martin Van Buren.
:dubious: whaaaat?
I went to the wedding of a coworker named Larry. He and his bride were both very religious people. When everyone was eating dinner he and his wife were making the rounds, visiting each table and saying hello to everyone. After they said hello to our table, they turned around to speak to the table next to us. At this point I noticed that the bride’s bow on the lower back of her dress had become unsnapped on one side and was hanging down. I told the guy sitting across from me to tell the bride so she could fix it. But before he could, Larry had already noticed and was fixing it, so I said “Never mind,” and as one of those freak silences that occasionally happen in a room full of people suddenly occurred, I continued, “Larry’s all over it.” That last part happened to ring out loud and clear just as Larry was grabbing at the bow that was dangling right over her ass.
Larry gave me the nastiest look I have ever seen. I wanted to slink under the table.
Oh I just remembered a GREAT one. I was in college and a bunch of people from my co-op were going to see a jazz band play. The band was playing, and they weren’t terribly good, and I was wondering what the hell was going on. Mind you I had never really listened to jazz or knew anything about jazz.
After a while, I leaned forward and whispered to the two people sitting in front of me, “It sounds like they’re just making it up as they go along!”
They both started laughing. Then one of them explained that they were doing that because that’s what jazz is. I was painfully embarrassed but it was so funny I had to laugh too.
Unfortunately I dwell on pretty much every bad/embarrassing experience that has ever happened to me, nearly 24 hours a day. I’m that kind of person and it sucks. Here are a couple of the more harmless moments, though:
My father had me baptized when I was 7 (Baptist Church) following a car accident. I was supposed to say a few words following and I just drew a complete and utter blank and stared at the congregation for around 10 minutes until finally the Deacon prompted “Do you want to accept Christ into your life?” and I managed a feeble “yes.”
So after that we had to go to Sunday School until I became a teenager and decided to stop. Once in a while we had to do presentations about the books we were studying to the congregation, and my brother and I were reviewing a passage, I had stage fright, was pretty confused and frustrated at the moment, and when my brother asked me something to which the answer was obviously “God” I proclaimed “John” in a snarky, “duh” sort of way. Then I caught myself and said “I mean, God.” The whole church started sniggering. sigh
Those moments and similar ones are pretty much all I remember about church. Since those days I find myself agnostic and pretty non-religious in general. Wonder if it contributed ;j
Going back a bit on the boards there is this Gem:
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=34045&highlight=fate
I think that would rank second or third on my list of stupid things that haunt me.
I was waiting for my brother when a car pulled up in front of me. I got in. It wasn’t my brother’s car. :eek:
In my junior year of high school I took an English class taught by a teacher who was much more interested in coaching than teaching english. She would often say things that were either wrong or demonstrated that she really didn’t know what she was talking about. One of my favorite examples is when she read from a series of passages demonstrating the different kinds of irony, and stated that one was an example of dramatic irony because it was so dramatic. Being the reserved person I am, I usually refrained from correcting her, except for on one occasion. She stated that autocratic means “ruled by one”. Remembering a bit of latin, I replied with, “I think you’re a little confused. Autocratic means self-ruled.” That night I looked it up in the dictionary. Autocratic does mean ruled by one. Granted, it wasn’t embarrassing at the time, but in retrospect it makes me feel like an ass.
Long story short, I had the exact same experience at the end of high school. And luckily, she never spoke of it again and we’re still friends. But damn, I wish I could take back everything I said.
Me: I was listening to Jethro Tull the other day…
Friend: Was it Thick as a Brick?
Me: pause for brainfart Yeah, it was pretty dense. You know how Tull is.
:smack: