Share the Embarrassment

What is your most embarrassing moment?

Why did you ask me that?

It is embarrassing.

I’m not going to share it with you.

Why do we always ask each other to share our most embarrassing moments? Perhaps it is because each of us have at least a few of them that we keep tucked away from others. Maybe it is to bring out our vulnerabilities through those moments to become more connected. Or is it that we just want to know that we are not the only ones who have had spinach in our teeth during an important speech or farted when we bent over in a crowded room. Connection, vulnerability and relationships are reasons to find out more about each other. 

I have a couple that used to mortify me. When I was in sixth grade and started shaving my armpits I accidentally shaved off my eyebrow. How you ask did I manage that. Well, being a newbie at this I was closely watching what I was doing and I guess I got my face a bit too close. No I am not a contortionist, just a caustious 12 year old who now had to go to school with a very public booboo. My mom tried to cover it with eyebrow pencil but I was growing up in the Phoenix area where it was hot and I got sweaty. It was a bigger embarrassment to have a missing eyebrow and black smudge all over my face. I survived barely. It still makes me cringe when I think of that time.

Another one is one I have not ever shared with more than a handful of people. Susi threatens me with the reveal when I threaten to share one of her moments. So here goes. Should I be drinking a glass of wine to share this? Even my keyboard fingers are stalling. Okay, I’ll show you mine if you show me yours. Gulp. Ron and I had a Get Well Naturally book that helped me eradicate my migraines. So it was proven to me. Endometriosis not only left me without a baby maker, it left me with internal hemorrhoids. Yikes, I just typed that. The book suggested garlic. It didn’t suggest eating garlic or rubbing it on my writer. It said that a clove pushed into the dark place would relieve the pain. Nope! What it did accomplish was having garlic aroma emit from every pore of my being. Remember my neatly shaven armpits? Yep, they were now a bad Italian restaurant stench. We laughed. I cried. I showered multiple time for multiple days. It didn’t help. It just took time to fade away. 

Now you know two of my most embarrassing stories. There are so many others but you know what makes them easier to remember? The people who were a part of them. My mom comforting me when I was so young and encouraging me that it was going to be okay. Susi reminding me over the years when I get too full of myself that I actually placed that garlic clove there. It connects us to each other when we are vulnerable. Sixth grade wouldn’t have been as memorable if I had two eyebrows all the way through. Remembering these situations as survival moments just may get me through the ones to come in my future. I am getting into my senior season and this body and mind are bound to fail me in one way or another. Hopefully, it won’t be loud and in a quiet church moment like the whoopee cushion Ryan brought to church years ago. But that is another story.

In Him,

Joyful

1-24-19