Hey, would you look at that? Valentines' Day is on Hump Day. Go figure.
In yesterday's post, I talked about the Hooters incident at my bachelor party being one of the most embarrassing moments of my life. That got me thinking (again) about what else I would put in that category. I came up with three memories that probably hold the top spots. Being both bold and a little stupid, I've decided to share them with you, extremely gentle readers. Two today, one tomorrow. Deal? Great.
First, let's travel back in time to 8th grade. You remember 8th grade, right? It was a time in which people cared so much more about what other people thought. It was also a time fraught with the fear that you might do something stupid, and news of that act would spread through the social networks so that you'd be ruined in high school before ever stepping foot on the campus. Ah, good times.
So it was in 8th grade that I found myself in a bowling league with my lifelong friend Jason and two of his friends from his previous school. Now I fully acknowledge that I'm a nerd, but I swear to you that I was frickin' Don Juan compared to those two guys. I was doing everything in my power to remain "the cool one on the team": chatting with our opponents in between frames, rolling my eyes at my teammates' jokes to make it clear that I didn't approve, etc. They were nice enough guys, but I didn't want them hurting the rep I was trying so hard to create.
One afternoon, it was my turn to bowl, and walked up to the ball return. One of my teammates asked, "Do you wanna use this?" as he threw a little bag to me. I caught it as some powder went flying. "No thanks, I already have some," I said, and I tossed it back to him. My ball was a little tight on my thumb, so I often used baby powder to make it looser, which is pretty standard in the bowling world. That's what I thought was in the bag he tossed me, but in actuality, I had just put sticky stuff on my hand without realizing it. So I started my five-step approach, and at the part where I would normally let go of the ball, I didn't. Instead, it stuck to my thumb all the way until my arm was about even with my chin. My momentum carried me stumbling about three feet out onto the lane. The buzzing sound of me crossing the line (indicating a fault) and a huge POP sound from my thumb's release echoed throughout the alley. Time slowed as the ball soared through the air like a lazy fly ball to right-centerfield. I say right-center instead of center because it eventually landed not on my lane, not on the one next to mine, but on the divider between that one and the one next to it. Now the echoing sound throughout the alley was the loud crash of a bowling ball hitting and denting the center divider.
I stood there for a second, out a few feet in my lane, looking at my ball two lanes over next to the damaged divider. I knew I had to turn around, so I did so as casually as one can in that situation. You know the scene in Back to the Future where Marty rocked out with his electric guitar at the Enchantment Under the Sea dance, kicking over the amps, etc. and then he opened his eyes to find a frozen crowd that didn't know how to react to what they had just witnessed? Well, let's just say that my fellow kids in the league perfected that same look right then. Blank, attempting-to-comprehend stares on every last one of them. I mumbled a half-hearted "Whoops" before I walked back to the seating area, trying desperately to look nonchalant. It didn't help that I needed one of the alley's employees to walk out onto the lane to retrieve my ball, and I spent the next couple of hours praying that the other kids would find my goof cool somehow.
Crazy as it sounds, that incident didn't follow me to high school. Maybe it's because in order to tell the story, someone first had to admit that he or she was in a bowling league. Whatever the case, I didn't care as long as it was gone. I can still very clearly remember the looks on the people's faces, and I can still remember hearing nothing but my footsteps and my heartbeat as I walked back to sit among my shocked peers. Therefore, that takes spot #3 on my most embarrassing moments.
Now let's travel farther back in time to around fifth grade. I attended a sleepaway camp a few weeks a summer for a few years, and it was great: a bunch of my closest friends, cool activities, fake Native American names for the counselors, secret ceremonies, and a chance to reinvent yourself with a group of people who didn't just see you every day in school. One of the earlier years that I attended, we were in the middle of the traditional welcome campfire on the first night. I was sitting on the right side of the U-shaped bench arrangement around the fire pit with my friends, trying to be cool enough to get recognized by the older cabins. I hoped to overhear something like, "Hey, even though he's younger, that Peter kid's pretty cool, so maybe we should ask him if he'd hang out with us." I never heard that though, so I must have been sitting too far away.
Anyway, the ceremony started and they were solemnly explaining the rites and sacred history of the camp. Out of nowhere (I mean nowhere!), the largest bolt of lightning I've ever seen in my life lit up the sky directly in my line of sight behind the left side of the benches. It startled me so much that I jumped to my feet and started to yell, "Holy shit!" In that brief moment of time, I knew I wasn't supposed to say that, so I quickly managed to change "Holy" into "Oh my." That wasn't enough though, and I heard myself starting to make a "sh" sound. Thinking on my feet, I changed the word to "shorts" at the very last second.
Allow me to take the perspective of a someone sitting in the left or middle section for a minute: "There I was, listening to how Broken Arrow got his name, and for no reason, a boy on the other side stood up and yelled 'Oh my shorts!' at the top of his lungs. I looked down at his shorts, but I didn't see anything wrong with them. Maybe there was a bug in there or something. Or maybe he's retarded." (I, of course, would never use that term in such a manner, but this imaginary kid in the left or middle section totally would. He needs a little sensitivity training if you ask me.)
Yeah, that was pretty awkward. I sat back down, immediately questioned by my friends as to the cause of my outburst. They saw the lightning also, but needless to say, they didn't have the same reaction. Running Bear glanced over to me as if to see if I was ok, and I nodded. My shorts were ok too, by the way. To this day, I don't know what would've been worse, "Holy shit," "Oh my shit," or "Oh my shorts." Maybe the second one. All I know is that I disrupted an important ceremony by yelling something incomprehensible and it seemed completely unwarranted to two-thirds of the people there. Embarrassing? You bet your sweet ass it was embarrassing.
So those are two of the three. Ah, loud noises and stunned crowds staring at me; such a perfect combination for embarrassment. Have a good day, everyone, and if you're doing anything for Valentines' Day tonight, I sincerely hope you avoid that level of embarrassment.
In yesterday's post, I talked about the Hooters incident at my bachelor party being one of the most embarrassing moments of my life. That got me thinking (again) about what else I would put in that category. I came up with three memories that probably hold the top spots. Being both bold and a little stupid, I've decided to share them with you, extremely gentle readers. Two today, one tomorrow. Deal? Great.
First, let's travel back in time to 8th grade. You remember 8th grade, right? It was a time in which people cared so much more about what other people thought. It was also a time fraught with the fear that you might do something stupid, and news of that act would spread through the social networks so that you'd be ruined in high school before ever stepping foot on the campus. Ah, good times.
So it was in 8th grade that I found myself in a bowling league with my lifelong friend Jason and two of his friends from his previous school. Now I fully acknowledge that I'm a nerd, but I swear to you that I was frickin' Don Juan compared to those two guys. I was doing everything in my power to remain "the cool one on the team": chatting with our opponents in between frames, rolling my eyes at my teammates' jokes to make it clear that I didn't approve, etc. They were nice enough guys, but I didn't want them hurting the rep I was trying so hard to create.
One afternoon, it was my turn to bowl, and walked up to the ball return. One of my teammates asked, "Do you wanna use this?" as he threw a little bag to me. I caught it as some powder went flying. "No thanks, I already have some," I said, and I tossed it back to him. My ball was a little tight on my thumb, so I often used baby powder to make it looser, which is pretty standard in the bowling world. That's what I thought was in the bag he tossed me, but in actuality, I had just put sticky stuff on my hand without realizing it. So I started my five-step approach, and at the part where I would normally let go of the ball, I didn't. Instead, it stuck to my thumb all the way until my arm was about even with my chin. My momentum carried me stumbling about three feet out onto the lane. The buzzing sound of me crossing the line (indicating a fault) and a huge POP sound from my thumb's release echoed throughout the alley. Time slowed as the ball soared through the air like a lazy fly ball to right-centerfield. I say right-center instead of center because it eventually landed not on my lane, not on the one next to mine, but on the divider between that one and the one next to it. Now the echoing sound throughout the alley was the loud crash of a bowling ball hitting and denting the center divider.
I stood there for a second, out a few feet in my lane, looking at my ball two lanes over next to the damaged divider. I knew I had to turn around, so I did so as casually as one can in that situation. You know the scene in Back to the Future where Marty rocked out with his electric guitar at the Enchantment Under the Sea dance, kicking over the amps, etc. and then he opened his eyes to find a frozen crowd that didn't know how to react to what they had just witnessed? Well, let's just say that my fellow kids in the league perfected that same look right then. Blank, attempting-to-comprehend stares on every last one of them. I mumbled a half-hearted "Whoops" before I walked back to the seating area, trying desperately to look nonchalant. It didn't help that I needed one of the alley's employees to walk out onto the lane to retrieve my ball, and I spent the next couple of hours praying that the other kids would find my goof cool somehow.
Crazy as it sounds, that incident didn't follow me to high school. Maybe it's because in order to tell the story, someone first had to admit that he or she was in a bowling league. Whatever the case, I didn't care as long as it was gone. I can still very clearly remember the looks on the people's faces, and I can still remember hearing nothing but my footsteps and my heartbeat as I walked back to sit among my shocked peers. Therefore, that takes spot #3 on my most embarrassing moments.
Now let's travel farther back in time to around fifth grade. I attended a sleepaway camp a few weeks a summer for a few years, and it was great: a bunch of my closest friends, cool activities, fake Native American names for the counselors, secret ceremonies, and a chance to reinvent yourself with a group of people who didn't just see you every day in school. One of the earlier years that I attended, we were in the middle of the traditional welcome campfire on the first night. I was sitting on the right side of the U-shaped bench arrangement around the fire pit with my friends, trying to be cool enough to get recognized by the older cabins. I hoped to overhear something like, "Hey, even though he's younger, that Peter kid's pretty cool, so maybe we should ask him if he'd hang out with us." I never heard that though, so I must have been sitting too far away.
Anyway, the ceremony started and they were solemnly explaining the rites and sacred history of the camp. Out of nowhere (I mean nowhere!), the largest bolt of lightning I've ever seen in my life lit up the sky directly in my line of sight behind the left side of the benches. It startled me so much that I jumped to my feet and started to yell, "Holy shit!" In that brief moment of time, I knew I wasn't supposed to say that, so I quickly managed to change "Holy" into "Oh my." That wasn't enough though, and I heard myself starting to make a "sh" sound. Thinking on my feet, I changed the word to "shorts" at the very last second.
Allow me to take the perspective of a someone sitting in the left or middle section for a minute: "There I was, listening to how Broken Arrow got his name, and for no reason, a boy on the other side stood up and yelled 'Oh my shorts!' at the top of his lungs. I looked down at his shorts, but I didn't see anything wrong with them. Maybe there was a bug in there or something. Or maybe he's retarded." (I, of course, would never use that term in such a manner, but this imaginary kid in the left or middle section totally would. He needs a little sensitivity training if you ask me.)
Yeah, that was pretty awkward. I sat back down, immediately questioned by my friends as to the cause of my outburst. They saw the lightning also, but needless to say, they didn't have the same reaction. Running Bear glanced over to me as if to see if I was ok, and I nodded. My shorts were ok too, by the way. To this day, I don't know what would've been worse, "Holy shit," "Oh my shit," or "Oh my shorts." Maybe the second one. All I know is that I disrupted an important ceremony by yelling something incomprehensible and it seemed completely unwarranted to two-thirds of the people there. Embarrassing? You bet your sweet ass it was embarrassing.
So those are two of the three. Ah, loud noises and stunned crowds staring at me; such a perfect combination for embarrassment. Have a good day, everyone, and if you're doing anything for Valentines' Day tonight, I sincerely hope you avoid that level of embarrassment.
1 comment:
Hey Pete,
Is that the same bowling ball that was lost on Nordhoff ? Just wondering, Sue
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