All righty, confession time. What’s the one big thing you did in your life that you’re totally ashamed of? Get it off your chest and feel better. I’ll go first.
When I was 8 my brother and I skipped school and went around a couple of neighborhoods with a coffee can decorated to look like a Jerry’s Kids charity can and collected money. Then we took all the money and played video games and ate candy all day.
Ahhh. MUCH better.
Unfortunately, most of the things I’m ashamed of, I’m way too ashamed to put my name to in a public forum.
I guess that’s saying something :o
What phraser said. Unless you’re offering me ‘absolution’, I ain’t telling.
How much money did you and your brother end up collecting, welby? Did you ever get caught (either being exposed as phonies, or the fact that you were skipping school?)
When I was 23 I went in on a get-rich-quick deal with a friend. I financed most of the operation :rolleyes: , which was going to government auctions and buying stuff dirt cheap and then turning around and selling it to others for a profit. You start out small, then parlay your profits into buying bigger stuff to sell. Eventually you’d be buying up foreclosed homes like they were Monopoly properties and selling them for thousands more in profit. It all looked good on paper and I was a sucker to think that it would work. It looked good on paper and the glowing “testimonies” from all the other people who had tried this and allegedly succeeed, had me convinced that I’d be on Easy Street on no time. We never let it get as far as to be buying real estate, but I lost a few thousand over the course of a few months.
If only I had a time machine would I go back and not commit this colossal mistake ever again!
I am really, really ashamed of teasing a homely, possibly mentally retarded girl in the sixth grade. It doesn’t make me feel any better to get it off my chest. I’ve felt terrible for 30 years.
“Non, je ne regrette rien.” — Edith Piaf, and moi.
I once abandoned a cat.
I am not a cat person (this is not an excuse, just a FWIW). They’re OK and all, but overall, I’m MUCH more of a doggie gal. I’d taken the cat from a desperate friend who’d gotten into school in NY and couldn’t take the cat with her.
The first few months were hell–the thing kept trying to kill me in my sleep, and would immediately wreak havoc on my ankles the second I stepped into my apartment. Sometimes I hid in my bedroom crying and writing bad poetry about it.
None of my friends would come to play.
Finally, one day we had a breakthrough (I neglected to shut the bathroom door all the way, and she came rushing in and jumped on my lap . . . I panicked and held my breath, waiting for claws to my eyeballs, but instead she rubbed my chin with her head and began to purr), and from then on she was very affectionate. We got along like gangbusters.
A few months later, my boyfriend moved in with me and, since I was going to my parents’ place for Christmas, was left to cat (and hamster-)sit.
Dude, when I got back after a week at home, the hamster (who had heretofore been quite friendly) did not want to be touched, and became a total biting freak, and the cat (who had heretofore been allowed outside on nice days, but spent most of her time inside) refused to come into the apartment.
The boyfriend claimed total innocence.
So she sort of became a local stray. I ended up putting food and water outside the apartment door for her, and would sit outside with her on occasion (but if I tried to carry her in, she’d do a Freddie Krueger on my neck). Other neighbors would see me with her and comment that they were feeding her, too. One guy said that she’d routinely squeeze into his apartment (sometimes bloodying his ankles in the process) as he was unlocking the door after work and refuse to leave until he gave her a hot dog.
(I, however, was the only person she’d follow to the neighborhood bar (about 3 blocks away)–she’d even wait around to walk me home.)
Anyway, eventually I broke up with the boy and my grandfather died, so I decided to move back to my hometown and in with my (newly widowed) grandmother.
She refused to let me bring the cat.
I begged everyone I knew to take her, but most people I knew remembered the stories I had told about our first few months together, and refused (of course, they also remembered the friend from whom I’d taken the cat, and how she used to come to work crying, saying, “My cat hates me”; this cat did not have a good record).
Moving Day (sometime in October) was the first time she’d ever set foot back into my apartment since the previous Christmas.
I left her sitting on the edge of the bathroom sink, licking herself, climbed into the U-Haul, and drove away sniffling.
Her name was Marguerite.
When I was 16, I participated in a 4-weeks student exchange to the US. On the last day my host parents gave me a farewell present: a large book about the US with photographs. Because I had been buying stuff like a maniac, the book would not fit into my suitcase. I left the book with them, gave them 20 dollars and asked them to mail the book to me. It never arrived …
It did not occur to me at the time that not taking their present must have offended them terribly. I still think about that …
When I was around 10, I started stealing money from my dad’s wallet. Just small change, but still. It went on for a long time, until I was caught. He had become suspicious and had made a note of what change he had for a number of days. He was really mad. I don’t want to know how mad he would be if he knew for how long I have actually been stealing from him 
I guess now that I’m here I have to admit that I was doing a vanity search and got sucked in to thinking Eve was talking about moi! :smack:
I’m ashamed at myself for laughing like a hyena at this.
On a less recent note, I’m ashamed of myself for unwittingly leading on a girl at university for a number of years. I thought we’d simply formed a great friendship – we were really good mates – but as her friends later told me, she was just waiting for me to make a move. She had being turning down other guys and great opportunities while waiting for me to figure it out.
I had no idea.
Having “Lady Marmalade” (the Moulin Rouge version) on my computer. ::hangs head in shame::
There are very few things that I have done that I am ashamed of. Mostly, when I do something, I decide at the time if I can live with the results and then I let it go.
One thing comes to mind. I was in love for the first time. It ended badly, the details are private, but it ended badly. Later, when I saw her and she was vulnerable, I said something very hateful. I did it because I was hurting and angry, but none-the-less it is something that I still feel shame over.
Let your karma be cleansed by the fact that my dad used to steal money (and match books, which I used to collect) from me when I was a kid.
Sometimes I’d wake up and find him on my bedroom floor, rooting through the pockets of my jeans for change.
My mom had no idea about this until last week (and my darling dad passed away in 1996). We decided that, since my parents didn’t let me work as a kid/teenager, my dad must have figured that any money in my pockets had come from my parents, and was therefore, essentially, still his. :dubious:
If you want I can email you one of those poems . . . That will make you laugh even harder. 
Email them to ME auntie em! I’d love to read them. Though, your story made me feel very, very sad indeed. Poor kitty
I’ve got a few things I’m ashamed of, but I’m not in the mood right now to haul them out of the back of my brain. I don’t particularly want to lay in bed feeling guilty and not being able to sleep.
Auntie Em, I think I speak for all of us when I say SHARE THE POEMS WITH THE REST OF THE CLASS. That’s what we’re here for. You’re supposed to POST them. Please!