Wednesday Factoid: Embarrassed

Today's Wednesday Factoid is: What's something you used to be embarrassed about and can laugh about now?

This is hard. Because to be honest, just about everything that was embarrassing when I was a kid was not petty or small to me then, so it's not petty or small to me now. I am the person I am because I grew from that little girl. So her embarrassments are not things I laugh at. It kinda feels like a betrayal to say "lol I was so embarrassed but now I laugh."

That may be partly because I wasn't embarrassed by typical things, or so movies would tell you. Apparently I was supposed to be super embarrassed by my parents, especially if they did "embarrassing" things in public, but I always thought the things my parents did were reflections on them, not on me. I didn't believe anyone was judging me for things they did. That was especially applicable because my mom would sometimes intentionally "embarrass" me by doing "embarrassing" things in public and I just didn't really care. That was her way of having fun. Though when she tells it to others she probably believes she succeeded in embarrassing me. Maybe it was a little embarrassing sometimes to be associated with someone who is going out of their way to do something deliberately ridiculous (like the time my mom came to my bookstore where I worked wearing a propeller hat and sat in the middle of the aisle and threw books everywhere pretending to be a child), but overall I generally felt like other people couldn't "embarrass" me with their own behavior.

There was an embarrassing incident from middle school once: I went to the bathroom and came back with toilet paper hanging out of my pants and didn't notice until the class laughed at me for having a "tail." My teacher comforted me afterwards but later actually made fun of me to my face saying she almost submitted that as "most embarrassing moment" in a year-end roundup, but decided against it. What. That is not something I laugh about now.

Speaking of year-end roundups, in my college chorus class one time they gave out really mean gag awards. They gave one to me that suggested I was never paying attention to what was going on in class. Not funny. (They also gave one to a girl in the class that suggested no one knew her name or who she was unless you point out that she's the girl with the big boobs. Not funny. What is the point of these things? They don't make people feel good and the people victimized aren't consenting, the way they might in a roast.)

I guess the closest I can think of to an incident I was embarrassed of then but can laugh at now is when I was so young I wasn't in school yet, I was waiting for the ice cream man and when the mail truck arrived I thought he was the ice cream man. Without prompt I ran up to him and requested a push-up pop, and he had to explain he wasn't the ice cream man. My mom thought it was funny and so did he, but I was super embarrassed for not knowing the difference between the trucks and got really bratty about demanding that even if he wasn't the ice cream man he should have my push-up. That's kind of cute. But I just remember being ashamed that I had missed the cues of it being the wrong truck and not having the ice cream music, and I didn't think it was particularly nice for anyone to giggle at my expense. Obviously it's not one of those searing traumatic moments or anything, but I guess that's the closest I come to having an embarrassing moment that I can laugh about now.