Now I know that might not mean anything to anyone else, but growing up it was my favorite cartoon. It was always that and the Ninja Turtles. And here I am at the ripe old age of 30 and my dad calls me because he heard that and thought about me. I never realized that he was paying attention. After all he had more important things to do back then, like hanging the moon and saving the world. Which I'm pretty sure he did both. But that's not why I'm writing this. I'm writing this because I wanted to talk about embarrassment. Which is something that I have become quite accustom to in my life. I bet I can almost guarantee that there isn't a person out there that has broken as many or has fallen out of as many chairs as I have. I'm not even joking about that, either I'm GUTTIER than I think I am or I have the bad look of always sitting in a chair that's about to go down.
Just look at the way that chair just buckled under me. Could there be a sadder sight? And let me just say that this picture doesn't even enter my top 10 of embarrassing moments, not even my top 50, and everybody in this bar kept coming up to me and asking if I was okay.
I have noticed though that most of the moments in my life that I have been most embarrassed about have involved my father. I can't really put my finger on why that is, except for maybe the fact that I do in fact care a lot what my father thinks of me. But those moments in life, those moments when you really want to crawl into a shell and get the hell out of there or jump into your time machine and jump ahead a few minutes to get out of that moment, my father always happened to be there.
I guess I won't go into all of such moments of my life but I'll instead give you my top 2. The top 2 most embarrassing moments of my life. The moments that have shaped me into the person I am today that is constantly doing embarrassing things, but can shake them off like nothing really happened.
1.) So I think I was 17 years old, and I had just gotten my first car. My father had finally gotten tired of driving me around and he bought me an all white dodge neon that was a 5-speed stick shift. Now one of the greatest moments of my you manhood was when I first mastered the stick shift. But let me just say that it was a long and humiliating road doing so. And anybody that knows how to drive a stick shift knows exactly what I'm talking about. The endless amount of times you are grinding those gears together or the times you stall out at a stoplight and cars behind you are laying on their horn. And the only real sense of relief you have is the fact that there wasn't a girl in the car with you. And god help you if you are at a stoplight that is on a hill. Oh my gosh the sweat beads start building up and rolling down your face.
So naturally when I first got my car it sat in the driveway for about a month. I had my license I was just too afraid to drive it. And I remember one particular day that my father decided that enough was enough and we were going to go out and drive it around. Now my father's neighborhood isn't really busy to this day and even less so back when this story took place. And I cautiously drove around the neighborhood, stalling out a few times and concentrating as hard as I could so that I didn't look like and idiot in front of my father.
Well after 20 minutes or so of my struggling through the gears my father decided he knew the perfect way to teach me. We went down a long straight road in the back of our neighborhood that nobody was ever on, and he got in the drivers seat and told me the best way to get comfortable with switching gears was to "Pop the Clutch" as he called it. He revved the car up and flew down the street switching through gears as the car picked up speed and then slamming on the breaks as we got closer to the dead end of the street. And when we were at a complete stop and my heart was about to jump out of my chest from my father trying to kill me he looked over at me and said, "That's how it's done. Now you try."
And as I got out of the car and walked over to the drivers side, all I could think about is, "My father doesn't know me at all." I mean growing up I was the kid that hated amusement parks because I thought that roller coasters where dangers and out of control. And now he wanted me to hurl us down the street in my new car, that I couldn't even drive that well towards a dead end. I mean did he have a death wish or what? And I remember getting in the car and reversing it back to where we started and I revved the car engine up and I just sat there. I couldn't do it, I was completely parallized with fear. And after a minute of sitting there my father finally said, "let's just drive around the neighborhood some more. And so we did.
And for 20 more minutes I drove around the neighborhood and I couldn't even look at my father. And to be honest I don't know if you looked at me. It felt like one of those moments in life that only boys know about. When you are with your father and without him saying it to you he is putting you in a position to be like, son this is one of the steps in becoming a man. And boy did I fail miserably in that step. And me and him never talked about it after that day and I don't remember talking much to him for the next week or so. I was embarrassed and humiliated. Of course I went on to master the stick shift and every time I'm out and it comes up and someone ask, "is there anyone here who can drive a stick?" there is always a sense of pride that swells up in me as so many other guys in the room say they can't when I know that I can.
2.) Now this story is not really for the faint of heart and it is by far the most embarrassing thing that has ever and I mean ever happened to me. I actually thought about not telling this story and pulling something else from all of the embarrassing things that have happened to me. But then I thought that would be a disservice to this blog and to my writing in general. I want to be as honest as I can be when it comes to my writing. I try to be as honest as I can be in life as well, but it always seems that there are always going to be white lies that sneak in every once in a while. I guess I've made peace with that. I mean I will always continue to be better, but who am I kidding, they are always going to find their way in.
But with my writing I want it to be different. I want that to be my most honest self, so that when somebody reads this they get a sense of what it's like to be me. What I really think about and how I really feel about most things. So here goes the most embarrassing story that I've never told in my entire life.
When I got to high school I went and lived with my father. He said it was so that he could teach me how to be a man. I tend to think it was so he would have someone to do the yard work and torture with his terrible cooking. Now I can honestly say that after a good 10 years my father's cooking has managed to slid up barely past edible. But that's not what this story is about. This story is about two men living in a house together and trying to figure out each others boundaries.
Now my father at the time was a bit a of bachelor when did have quite a few women coming in and out of the house. And the strange thing was that they all felt the need to try and impress me like a was a 8 year old child. I would randomly get pairs of socks and other things from these women in an attempt to win me over. But I learned early on to never get to attached because there would be a new one next month. And I made the mistake of calling one by the wrong name once and I can only imagine that was a very awkward night for my father.
My dad hadn't quite gotten use to his teenage son living with him since we really hadn't lived in the same house together for I guess a good 6 or 7 years. And oh was that clear on this one not so fine day. I had just gotten home from basketball practice if I'm not mistaken. I showered up and started in on a little homework. and after I was done I turned on the TV and nothing was on. Now being that I was 16 at the time and there was nothing to do and I was a ball of hormones anyway I decided to do what any 16 year old boy in my situation would do. You guess it, I decided to SNAP ONE OFF. I hope you all know the euphemism I'm referring to. And if you don't you are probably way to young to be reading this blog.
Now this was somewhere around the time of dial-up internet and my house just barely had a computer. And laptops where completely out of the question for my family. So good old internet porn on the hundreds of free porn sites that are around today was completely out of the question. Now what was in the question were the dvds that were floating around. I really do miss the old days of porn on a dvd. But anyway, I threw on one of my favorite dvds turned the TV down to as low as it could go where I could still hear things every once in a while like, "spank me" and things of that nature, but not so loud that it would draw attention to my room. There is a fine line that you have to walk when you are a 16 year old boy living with your father watching porn. And let me just say that I had it down to a science. Or so I thought.
Because the next thing you know I'm mid SNAP and my door is swinging open and it's my father announcing dinner. Now let me just say there has never been a single moment in my life more embarrassing than that moment right there. Me a 16 year old boy with my dick in my hands, and porn on the TV. My father busting in and seeing what's happening and rushing out, while I try to cover myself up. Just thinking about it now has me laughing embarrassingly at my computer. I remember staying in my room for a good hour before I came out to get my dinner. And I didn't look up at all, I grabbed my food that was cold took it directly to my room and shoveled it into my mouth and sat there for another two hours waiting for my father to go to bed before I left my room to put my plate away. And I'll be damned if he didn't stay up extra late that night. And all I could think about that night was, why in the hell did my door not have a lock on it?
For the next week me and my father didn't say but two words to each other. Neither one of us knew what to say. I didn't think I would ever live it down, and I can only imagine what he thought about it. And then out of nowhere I'm sitting in my room on a Saturday afternoon and there is a knock on my door. and in walks my father, and he has with him one of those large "know yourself and your changing body" teen puberty books. and we have what I can only assume is the sex talk. I'm not exactly sure what all was said but when it was all done I had a book full of different nicknames for male and female genitalia and a list with pictures with all sorts of sexually transmitted diseases. And to this day me and my father never mention a word about either one of these days. The only thing that I really know is that it was by far the single most embarrassing moment of my life.
Now I've told you these stories to prove a point. Well maybe I've told you these stories because I think they are entertaining. Seriously there is a point to all of this. I think to often in life people are afraid to do the things they want to do because they are afraid of being embarrassed. I know that I have been guilty of that. Even with all the embarrassing things that I have done. And I wanted to tell you these stories to let you all out there know that embarrassment is just a part of life. I mean if you are someone like me then it is a big part of your life. But in the long run it really just doesn't matter. It's another story to tell at a party, and it doesn't kill you. Wear your embarrassments like a bandage of honor, I'm telling you that's what I do and it really just makes a world of difference. Anyway, if you've gotten nothing from this I hope at least you have enjoyed the stories.
Thanks Alyssa
