Red-faced moments Part II

Sit back and get comfortable, gentle readers, for you are about to read a tale of childhood innocence, confusion, creative bravery, regular embarrassment, hideous embarrassment, and ultimately sweet, sweet redemption. Uh oh, this looks like it's going to be a long post.

Childhood Innocence
I went to a private elementary school through sixth grade. My last year, I'd become a sizeable fish there, playing on all four sports teams and nabbing some highly-coveted roles in plays. Along with that, I was friendly with almost all of my peers, and the teachers and administrators liked me and encouraged me. I enjoyed school, and never quite understood the kids who celebrated the last day of school like they'd just won the World Series. What could possibly go wrong in an environment like that?

Confusion
One word: Girls. I remember sitting around with some male friends, and the topic of girls in our class came up. For some reason, we were behind the curve and still used "love" for what we should've been calling "like like," such as, "Well I know you like her, but do you like like her?" We hadn't caught on to that yet, so one friend was openly telling us that he kinda loved this girl in our class. "Kinda love" isn't said much in adult days, but we totally knew what he meant. "Who do you love, Peter?" they asked me. I had no idea, but since they all seemed so sure of themselves, I must've loved somebody and just not realized it yet. I quickly thought of all my female friends in our class, and I really liked a lot of them quite a bit, but none even remotely romantically. My best female friend at the time was Mandy, so I told them with absolutely zero confidence, "Well, I guess I love Mandy."

Creative Bravery
"You have to tell her!" they demanded. I had no intention of doing anything of the sort, but they made it sound like that was the next inevitable step. You love somebody, then you tell her. Just as I was coming around to the idea of mentioning it to her at some point during recess, things got scarier: "How are you going to do it?" they asked. Shit, I hadn't realized that just telling her wasn't sufficient. (Please remember, this was 6th grade. I would now have no problem telling anyone to mind their own business and let me do things my way. Back then, my desires remained flexible to match those of the group.)

Here's where things fell apart. My brilliant plan was as follows: I told a kid named Jason P. (who we all knew Mandy loved, by the way) to tell Mandy that I had a special message for her. The message was the secret in the Beatles song, "Do You Want to Know a Secret." That is, "I'm in love with you," but she'd have to figure that out on her own if she didn't know the song because Jason wasn't instructed to tell her. I had to make it unnecessarily tricky. I think it's fair to assume that the virtues of direct communication weren't taught until later in life. In any case, Jason agreed, and he left to find Mandy as I waited, unsure of what I even wanted the response to be.

Regular Embarrassment
The next morning, Mandy came running up to me before class. "I got your message from Jason," she said, "and I ran home and asked my mom to sing me the song." "Oh," I said. "So...thank you," she said, then turned and walked away. I didn't know what to make of that, so I ignored it and hoped the whole situation would go away as quickly as possible. After recess that day though, I heard her telling her friend the story. "So Jason loves you?" the friend asked. "No, Peter does," Mandy replied. "Oh, ok," was the response.

A week passed, and Mandy and I still talked often but had successfully avoided the dreaded topic, and none of my male friends had brought it up either. So, my plan didn't exactly work, but I was no worse for the wear, right?

Hideous Embarrassment
It was about two weeks later that we had a substitute teacher. He was a cool, younger guy, and I'd sat and chatted with him during some of the breaks. When we only had about an hour left of class, he asked if I could do him a favor. I went to his car in the parking lot and brought his guitar case back to the classroom for an end-of-the-day treat. (I know you all can see where this is going, but I assure you it was the farthest thing from my mind.) For the last hour, we would be allowed to socialize and he'd play his guitar and sing for the class. I was with the guys off in one corner talking about normal boy stuff, and most of the girls were in a dense pack in front of the teacher.

He played one song and then a second. He sounded good, and the class (especially the girls) enjoyed having something different in the schoolday. Then he started the third song: "You'll never know how much I really love you/You'll never know how much I really care." For some reason, it hadn't kicked in yet. It sounded familiar, but I couldn't place it. Then a few more notes, and then the fateful word: "Listen." Before he even finished the first line, I felt my face on fire. Before he finished the second line, the classroom was filled with laughter. I looked next to me and saw my male friends pointing and laughing, then turning, I caught Mandy and her friends laughing as well. The teacher stopped and followed everyone's pointed fingers to me. By this point, my face was so flushed that I could feel my eyes watering (not from crying - let me be clear about that). I walked toward the teacher and asked if I could go to the bathroom, hoping he could hear me about the cackling. "Are you ok?" he asked, genuinely concerned. "I just need to go to the bathroom," I urgently lied. He let me go, and I stewed in the bathroom for the next 20 minutes. I kept picturing a classmate named Amanda Nixon, pointing and laughing, and wondering who even told her the story since she wasn't good friends with Mandy. Clearly everyone knew, and if they hadn't, they were learning the story right then.

With a minute left of the day, I snuck back in, got my stuff, and left. It seemed that the teacher was cute enough that the girls thankfully forgot about me for the time being. I didn't argue, and I made it to my mom's car without encountering anyone from my class.

Sweet, Sweet Redemption
Even though it very rarely came up the rest of the year and it didn't seem to affect my social life negatively, I was still scarred by that experience. The one thing I kept thinking was that I should never have even been in that situation to begin with. If I had just told them that I didn't love any of the girls in our class, or that Mandy was just a friend, or that I loved some other made-up girl I met at camp, none of that would've happened. I lost contact with almost all of my classmates after graduation since we went to various junior highs, but the memory was still right there. Any time the subject of embarrassing moments came up, I knew my #1. In fact, I went so far as to say on multiple occasions that that situation was the only regret I had in my life. I know, heavy stuff.

And then five years later, something happened. I was in an SAT prep class with two friends, and who did we see? Mandy. We all chatted, talked about high school, asked if they knew so-and-so, etc. The whole time, I was just hoping she wouldn't mention that day in class. The four of us met up during the lunch break and headed over to the nearby Denny's. Midway through the meal, Mandy said, "Hey Peter, remember 'Do You Want to Know a Secret?'" I turned slightly red and answered, "Yeah, I'm pretty sure I remember that." Then the most remarkable thing happened. Mandy said, "I know you were probably pressured into choosing someone to like, and since I was your best female friend, it was easy to confuse that." Almost word for frickin word of what I had been saying since that day. She got it, and since girls mature faster than boys, she probably understood my feelings even better than I did back in sixth grade.

From that day forward, I've held my head high when it comes to that horrifically embarrassing moment. I can't take back how it felt in those panicky moments, but I stopped regretting it and started viewing it as a learning experience. Namely, I learned to hate that substitute teacher for bringing his stupid guitar. And now when that song comes on, I can knowingly smile to myself instead of looking around anxiously and starting to sweat.

I once again lost touch with Mandy after that class (although I did see her on tv playing competitive dodgeball once and nearly spit out my drink). Ah, it feels good to get that story off my chest. Not many people's most embarrassing moment ends with a chapter called "Sweet, Sweet Redemption," so I'm thankful for that. Have a good day, gentle readers, and remember the perils of indirect communication.

*Remember, please email ptklein@gmail.com with questions, opinions, or possible future topics of conversation. I need all the help I can get.*

Red-faced moments

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.