To date, what has been your most embarassing moment in life?

I have a few of them, although as I have gotten older the embarrassment doesn’t last long. My first one was when I was 11 and wearing pantyhose for the first time with a dress. I walked to school (it was picture day) and played on the playground for a while. My best friend arrived and let me know that I had tucked my skirt up into the back of my nylons.

My most recent happened when we were skiing as a family. I was lined up for a quad chair and I was lost in thought (which often happens to me). Suddenly I thought I had missed the chair and I shuffled madly to catch it and ended up getting dragged by a bar at some guy’s feet. They stopped the chair lift, my husband and kids were killing themselves laughing and the guy said, “You really wanted to sit with me, hey?” That embarrassment lasted the rest of the day and I still giggle about it.

I’m too embarrassed to tell.

Don’t know that this is the MOST embarrassing…but, back in about 1985, when wearing suspenders down around your legs was ‘cool’...I was in the popcorn line with my then 8–9 year old daughter. We were behind a young man wearing suspenders and I jokingly said, “Hey, why don’t you pull those things up? They can’t help you THAT way!”

About that time, I look down…and, I guess seeting the surprise on my face, everyone else did, too. A pair of panties must have been stuck in the leg of my jeans from the laundry, and now was on my shoe. The young man couldn’t have been more pleased.

As my 100-year old grandfather would have said, “That’ll learn ya.” It did. I’ve mostly worn skirts/dresses ever since!

I have so many that I try not to collect or remember them, because if I did, I’d just sit at home all day being mortified and never go outside again. So when people ask this question, I can never think of anything because I try to let these moments go. Buuuut.. they’re not gone entirely, because every now and then, I’ll get a random flash of a memory and be reminded of a highly embarrassing situation and be mortified all over again.

The most embarrassing situation I can think of at the moment was a few years ago, when my then-girlfriend was a bridesmaid in her friend’s wedding and I came along. I’m somewhat socially inept at times, which can be embarrassing enough, plus have social anxiety and a hatred/fear of behaving inappropriately in social situations.

Anyway, I made it through the rehearsal and rehearsal dinner okay, but I felt so entirely out of my element. The groom was a doctor, the bride a psych PhD, the wedding party and guests were chock full of MDs and PhDs. Most of the people were wealthy and refined and seemed uninterested in meeting us (my gf and I, plus a few other down-to-earth “different” folks we bonded with), so that just added to my nervousness and feeling out of place.

The day of the wedding, I’m in a suit, which is way better than a dress, but still feels really weird and very out of place because I’m the only woman not wearing a dress. The wedding happens, all is good, then we go to the swank hotel where the reception is being held. I’m feeling really out-of-place and kind of wanting to run.

So my girlfriend calls me over to where she’s talking to a group of people, which turn out to be her professors, mentors, etc. She introduces me around, I smile politely and listen to their conversation. Then, all of a sudden, someone asked me something, everyone falls silent, and I have this group of like 8 people all looking at me. This is when my brain overloaded and shut down, leaving me kind of panicked and totally blank.

I tried so hard to act normal, but I was sweating out of nervousness and blushing hard. I’d been introduced to a lady whose ties to the wedding were unclear, so then I hear myself say, ”So… why are you here?”

Everything came to a screeching halt and they all stared at me in silence. It was like I dropped a giant rock in the middle of the group. They all stood there, blinking at me in disbelief. It felt like the silence went on forever. Meanwhile, I’m going, Oh no.. oh, no.. oh, no.. think of something to recover, think…

I gave my brain a kick and thankfully it started up again, and I was able to blurt out that I would never just tell people, but thankfully you guys are psychologists so you understand, I have social anxiety and I get nervous and my brain doesn’t work right and things come out of my mouth in a way that’s not what I mean, and what I really meant to say was, “How do you know the bride or groom?”

Being psychologists, they did understand, and we all kind of laughed about it. Written down, it doesn’t even sound that embarrassing, but OMG, I was so embarrassed I wanted to crawl under a rock somewhere and never come out.

My skirt blew up over my head at a Memorial Day parade.That’s in my top 10.

In 8th grade I ripped the loudest fart ‘EVER’ in front of the entire wrestling team. The whole team was in the classroom and the coach was front and center ready to demonstrate a wrestling move and I feel this gas bubble and I am “oh oh” and try real hard to hold it in. So here it is stone cold quiet and all eyes are on coach…I am sitting and squirming away on the metal folding chair and….BRRRRRRRPPP!! I mean it couldn’t have been louder if it was on the PA system!! HS I was mortified and of course a room full of 13 yrd olds went ballistic!! I got it good for the next 6 months!!

I could write a book, in fact, I think I will. You’ll have to buy it.

I think I was about 8 years old, and I was at camp during the summer. Swimming was our last activity of the day, so we quickly had to change when it was over so we wouldn’t miss the buses going home. Well, one day things seemed to go quicker than usual, so I left the locker room to get to the bus area…

… only to realize that I wasn’t wearing any pants. I had forgotten to put them on, and they were still in my locker.

Every once in a while, if I’m really tired when I wake up in the morning, I look down to make sure I’ve put my pants on before going to work. :-)

I was a little tipsy, alright, I was two sheets to the wind and we were out dancing, I went to the ladies room to potty when I came out I was waltzed around the dance floor, just before I took my seat I realized the back of my dress had been stuck in the waistband of my pantyhose.

I can’t think of THE most but this one was Bad: when I was in my late twenties, my husband had a Honda 90 motorcycle parked in the apartment’s parking lot. As he did often, he said, “go out there and give it a little gas, it’s REAL SLOW, you’ll be fine” so I hopped on it, turned the key on and gave it a little gas. It LEAPED FORWARD and CRASHED into OUR car. I then noticed that for entertainment purposes some guy was watching me from the second floor balcony-my husband was watching from some distance. I raced into our apt, sat down on the bed and bawled my eyes out in humiliation.

There are several, of course, but one time I was going to a movie with a friend. His mother bought us each a bag of candy. I had walked out of the theater to get something, without realizing that there was a hole in the bag. As I walked back the the theater, I spilled the candy out of the bag, and then my shoe fell off and I fell over. I mob of people just gathered around and watched as I crawled on the floor with one shoe, attempting to put the candy back in the bag as it just fell through the bottom. Not a pleasant moment.