Awkward Moments

When I started this blog, I promised revelations about life’s most awkward moments. I’m sure this is an incomplete list, but here’s what I’ve come up with this morning:

• The time in college when four friends and I accidentally went to the filming of an HBO Black Comedy Night.  We are not black.
  

• The time in college I wrote history paper on the wrong war. Somehow I still got an A.

• The time in college I wrote a paper on the Bolshevik Revolution and my TA congratulated me on coming up with a new idea about Lenin.  I am no Bolshevik and that was not my intention.

• The time in college I gave an oral report on a book I only half read and, unbeknownst to me (because I had skipped lecture), the prof had lectured on it two days before. I muffed the whole thing.  The TA and class were giving me strange looks. But I still passed.
  

• When the girls started a new school and I was suffering from shingles, in the right eye and upper quadrant of my face.  No longer contagious but I couldn’t wear make-up. Whenever we met someone new, my youngest daughter would say, “Mommy usually looks better than this! She just isn’t wearing makeup!”
  

• The time when, during a Sunday morning church service, I was giving a talk about small groups. I made a joke about ménage à trois and nobody laughed. I had to say, “C’mon now, that was funny!” The pastor had approved of my written script, and nevertheless spit out his coffee when I said it.  And after the service two different people told me it was one of the funniest things they’d ever heard in church.  Couldn’t they have laughed in the moment?

• Time I was serving communion and laughed twice, both were very quiet and it was mutual with the people to whom I was serving.  After we were done, the pastor made a comment about how communion is joyful and laughter is a good part of it. In the moment I didn’t even realize that I had committed such a horrible faux pas, and he saved my ass.

• Also at church, when the women’s ministry group was discussing possible activities, and they were all very holy and benevolent.  I suggested dinner and drinks because, “Not everything has to be deathly religious.” I’m still known for that one. 
  

• The time my daughter was asking why our dog’s “thingy stuck out” even though he was fully neutered, and I told her to ask to vet. The dog was constantly getting erections. (I’m mischievous and wanted to hear what the vet would say.) He blushed and stammered and told her to ask her mother.  I then proceeded to tell her that it just meant that he was growing up and wanted to fall in love, get married, and start a family.  The vet said, “Yes, yes. That’s right,” and she accepted it.

• The time I was with the female vet and realized I had my yoga pants on backward.  I asked her if I could have the room for a moment when we were done and she looked at me inquisitively.  I explained and she laughed and said she’d done that before!
  

• The time I vomited in a full elevator in the Ala Moana Hotel in Honolulu. I was in the very back and it splashed on everyone. My dad tried to catch it in his hands. I told my mother I was sick, but she said it was just jet lag and I should eat a big breakfast. Nevertheless my parents made me come on all the errands and doctors’ visits.  So I vomited again at Farrell's Ice Cream Parlor, in the bathroom but not in a toilet stall, as there was a long line.
  

• The time I was babysitting and later realized one bra strap had come undone and the flap was completely down on one side. It was not a thick shirt.

• The time I was babysitting and the little girl was sitting on lap, against me.  She turned and said, “You have big ones, don't you?”

• The same girl asking if I even had eyelashes (they are very blond).
  

• The time in a college symphonic band performance when I came in a measure early. On the crash cymbals.
  

• Simply that I was 5'7" and a C-cup in the fourth grade.

• The time I lightly touched a girl on the school yard, not realizing my own strength. Suddenly it was, "Sharie punched Noel in the stomach," and we both had to stand against the wall during recess for a whole week. 
  

• The time as a child we went to Tijuana for a day with our cousins, and grandma and great aunt.  Their mother had died of colon cancer, so they were firmly committed to constantly eating figs so they would never be constipated. Well, driving back across the border they realized that the figs would be confiscated as fruit.  Heaven forbid they lose their figs! My mother grabbed them and told me to stick them (in a plastic bag) under my skirt.  I was terrified, but we got through the border check.  And that’s how I have a history as an international smuggler.