day twenty-four

day twenty-four: describe your most embarrassing moment

Oh goodness. If you know me, you know that my entire life is composed of one embarrassing moment after another. And I mean that quite literally. So to pick one of those moments and label it as the most embarrassing moment is actually really difficult. Because there's a lot that might reach up to that level. (Really. I could write a book purely on the embarrassing moments in my life. A really big book, guys.)

Okay. The most embarrassing moment I can think of right now is a bit difficult to tell, because it requires that you have a knowledge of the layout of my first high school. I will do my best to explain it, I promise.

My school was set up kind of like an "L" - if you've ever been in an "L" shaped building, you know they're all kind of set up the same way. Generally, in the point where the L meets, there's a big sort of common area thing. In my high school, that's where the office was located AND where any lunch time sale things were happening. (Formal dance tickets, puppy chow sales, what have you...) To get up to the main part of that, you go through the main doors and up like..three steps I think. Then you can go either way, or up another set of stairs to get to whatever class it is you're going to. There is another way to get into the school and to the office area as well. You enter a door on the end of the L, go up a series of slight inclines, and walk straight ahead and you'll get to that area. I promise, all of this is important to the embarrassment of the story. Really.

Okay. Keep all of the above information in mind.

This is my junior year in high school, a pretty rough year for me up until...February/March. I had knee surgery in November that year and had to be on crutches for a month, non-weight-bearing. (Seriously awful.) My high school always holds a winter formal within the first couple weekends of December, and it is a HUGE deal. My sister, Jay, was a senior at the time, so she got put in charge of helping me get around school (because I didn't have friends besides her. This is a very true story.) She was a saint, she really was. And because she was my only friend/in charge of taking care of me, we would eat lunch together. I think we would usually just go sit in the car while eating the lunches our mom had packed for us. Kind of pathetic, but that was my experience in high school. (Which is embarrassing enough as it is.)

So one day, we were walking back into school after lunch. Usually we would walk in through the door at the end of the L and I would walk up the ramps to get to my class, because it was gloriously easy that way. But for some reason that day, we took the main entrance at the intersection point of the L, on a day when they were selling dance tickets. It was the busiest day for sales on those stupid tickets. I swear so many people were hanging out there buying their tickets, or discussing their super great formal plans. I wasn't very good with crutches + stairs, and my sister wasn't paying very close attention to me. I make it up the first two steps perfectly fine. But on the last step, my foot caught on the edge of the stair. My crutches fell out of my hands, my knee was in an immobilizer so I couldn't even do anything to try to stop myself. I fell. On my face. (like a board.) In front of everyone.

After the fall, only my sister and my former biology teacher came to help me. (Jay only helped me after she laughed for a minute, and helped me in fits of laughter.) Everyone else sat there staring/laughing. It was really, really awful. And when you can't move your knee at all, it's hard to get up off the ground. It was awful. Luckily though, my classroom was the first or second room right off the L, so I just got in there as quickly as possible and let my face burn crimson in the shame I felt.

It got worse though. I only had like...two minutes of alone time after the fall to calm myself down. And I don't calm down easily. (My face was bright red for at least an hour after the fall.) People started coming into my class who had witnessed the fall. And they couldn't/wouldn't stop laughing at me. None of them said anything. None of them asked me if I was okay. They just laughed. (Mocking laugh, not fun laugh.) The worst was that my best friend (who was not my best friend at that point, there's a long story with that) laughed at me, too. It hurt. A lot. When we rekindled our friendship in March, we talked about my fall. He still thinks it's hilarious, and I still think he's a jerk for laughing at me. I mean, we'd been through a lot, there was lots of tension between us, but you couldn't have asked if I was okay?

So. That's one of my most embarrassing moments for you. This took me a really long time to write, because the bad feelings came up again. The nightmares of high school are all returning to my mind. (I had a really bad experience. A lot of people say that, but I really did. Maybe I'll tell you about it sometime.)

Okay. Have a good, hopefully non-embarrassing day!

s.e.