Curse you Cordelia & Your Tagging!

Published on June 13, 2006 By Zoomba In Life Journals

Ok, so it turns out that I've been tagged to do this embarassment meme. These things are the equivalent blog equivalent of the "send this email on to 5 other people..." chain emails/letters... they never go away!

Well, without further delay, here are my 5 most embarassing childhood moments:

1. In first or second grade, a friend and I had a very complex plan for a fort were going to build in his back yard over the upcoming summer. It involved digging, building structures, very high-tech security devices... all the hair-brained ideas little kids come up with and think they can accomplish without ever asking for permission from their parents. Well, one day I called my friend to talk about what we were going to be doing, and I was really excited about it. I had spent the day before with pads of paper, crayons and pencils marking all sorts of things out. His mom picked up the phone, and I was so excited I went into a 5min explanation of all the things we were going to do this summer. I detailed all sorts of steps and phases to the project, all the cool things we were going to use the fort for. I just rattled it all off and didn't give her much of a chance to respond. When I finished, there was a pause and then she said in a very sweet voice..

"Dear, I think you have the wrong number..."

It wasn't his mom, I had mis-keyed the phone and had tied this poor woman up on the phone for 5min rambling about things that made no sense to her, but she was very polite and nice about it and didn't just hang up. I don't think I could bring myself to touch the phone for a few weeks after that. Every time I thought about it I'd turn purple in embarassment.

2. In 6th grade, near the end of the year we had a half-day outdoor party of sorts with cake, soda, and tons of games and such. One such game was a sort of relay where everyone was in teams of 4, and each team had a bucket of water and a pie plate. About 30 yards out there was another bucket, but empty, with a line drawn in it. The goal was to fill the pie plate with water from the starting bucket and race it across the field to your empty bucket and try to fill it up first. Everyone took turns running. But there was a twist, it was a dizzy-bat sort of game where before you filled up your plate, you had to spin around 10 times, so you were staggering down the field with a tin pie plate spilling water as you ran.

Well, my team was on the end row where the teacher was. My turn came up and I got to spinning, filled my plate and staggered down the field. I was good and dizzy. Well, I lost track of where I was running, and ended up straying of to the side towards the teacher, when I got close he yelled to turn back, so I tried, but tripped and ended up tossing the pie plate full of water onto him... he was in a suit.... he was not happy.

I couldn't bring myself to make eye contact with him for the last few weeks of the school year.

3. Speaking of incidents involving spinning, got another one. This time I was probably 13 or so and my family went to a minor-league ball game. One of the between-inning events they did was a dizzy-bat race where you could win a free pizza from Pizza Hut. Well, I'm all about free pizza so I tossed my name in the entry box. Around inning 6 or so, they pulled the names and mine came up and I trotted off down the field, confident that I'd have free pizza that night.

I get down to the field and meet my competition... a 4 year old girl. Now, I'm a teenage boy who is intent on pizza so I figure I'm just going to crush her. THey lay out the rules. 10 spins, then run from the pitcher's mound to a bit beyond second base to the team mascot, first one there wins. Ok, I've got this, I can spin WAY faster than this little girl. So they say go and I start spinning, and I'm marking out my spins, but there's someone there beside each of us counting the spins off too. For every 4-5 rotations I make, they guy calls off 1. Something is rotten in the state of Denmark! But I keep spinning and somehow the little girl reaches 10 before me... but no sweat... I have longer legs and can run faster. Around 30 spins for me the guy says "Go!" and gives me a nudge in a direction..... the wrong direction. But I'm very very dizzy by this point and have my head down so I can focus on where I'm putting my feet. I run full-tilt, and suddenly I hear a lot of yelling from the crowd, I look up briefly and find that I'm running back towards the stands behind home plate... so I try and change direction and make a very very wide turn trying to get reoriented. I basically end up on the first base line and am again running full-tilt. Near the end of my nice arc, I get to the dugout and hit the gravel right before it, and am still trying to straighten myself out. I hit the gravel and my feet go out from under me and I slide on my left knee through the gravel and fly INTO the dugout and was caught by a few of the players.

The little girl had long since-won. My leg was all sliced up from the gravel, and I was mortified. When I emerged from the dug-out... a standing ovation from the crowd... very very embarassing.

4 & 5. This bit counts for two since it was really just a very long series of mortifying events for a little boy. Think of this as hell for a kid at the age where the opposite sex still has cooties. This was 3rd through 5th grade, my sister was in brownies (The Girl Scout equivalent of Cub Scouts) and my mom was an assistant leader. And during these years my dad was a member of the town council which had meetings the same night as the brownie meetings. So instead of getting a babysitter every single week, or sending me to sit in the corner quietly during a town council meeting, I was dragged off to Girl Scouts.

-Embarassing point #1: I was the only boy Girl Scout in my class... many of the girls in my class were in the troupe. Many of the boys had sisters in it and would see me there when they had to go with mom to pick siblings up. Everyone knew I was a girl scout and I got no end of grief for it.

-Embarassing point #2: I sold girl scout cookies. My sister when she was little was painfully shy, and when she went around selling cookies, she'd just hold the order form up silently to anyone who answered their door. Mom didn't want to sell for her, but here she had a son who wasn't afraid of strangers and had general success selling things for fund raisers and such... so I was ordered to sell girl scout cookies for my sister. This got a lot of strange looks from neighbors and people I sold to when I explained what I was selling... and a lot of "oh, that's so cute, a boy selling girl scout cookies!" No little boy wants to be called cute.

-Embarassing point #3: Being the only boy in the troupe, of course every time they did a play, I got to be Prince Charming. Every. Damn Time. Remember this is firmly in the "cooties" stage of life. Well, one of the plays was a modified Cinderella, with some weird skits and gags tossed in that the girls wrote. This one was a big production for them and they actually reserved the school auditorium to perform it. And since many of the girls who went to my school (it was a smallish school), they arranged to do two shows. The first, in front of the entire school. The second in front of just the parents in the evening. Now, anyone in the school who didn't know I was essentially a girl scout did now. The worst part of the whole thing? At the end there was a scene where I had to DANCE WITH A GIRL!!!!! This was terrifying. And I had to do it in front of first a group of snickering kids, and second in front of a ton of parents going "awwwwwww". At the end of my final scene in both shows I just vanished back stage and burried myself under piles of gym equipment (earth balls are heavy and hard to move if you're like 90lbs) and wouldn't come out until it was all over. At the end of the evening show, they were calling all the girls up and giving them flowers and letting them take a bow. I wanted NOTHING to do with this and my terror and embarassment grew even greater when at the end they called my name... I was NOT coming out... no way... nuh-uh... not a chance. They spent a minute or two trying to coax me out from behind the stage, and finally I yelled out "You're not going to give me FLOWERS are you!?" Which got another round of "awwwww!" and a lot of laughter from the parents. Great... even worse. Well I did go out finally. The good news? No flowers, but I did get $20! That's a fortune to a little kid!

Ok... now that I've relived those memories, it's time to spread the pain! I tag Bakerstreet, CariElf and... oh hell, why not? Lucas Bailey!

Comments

Dr Guy

on Jun 13, 2006

I always knew you were a dizzy dude! Great Girl Scout stories too. Got any Samoas?

KarmaGirl

on Jun 13, 2006

Hmm...I will add this to my list to embarrass you with later...

Dr Guy

on Jun 13, 2006

Hmm...I will add this to my list to embarrass you with later...

Oops!

Trudygolightly

on Jun 13, 2006

I like the Tag-a-Long cookies myself, and I still remember the song from brownie scouts, "I've something in my pocket, it belongs across my face, I keep it very close at hand in a most convient place, I bet you couldn't guess it if you guesed a long, long time, so I'll take it out and put it on, it's a great big brownie smile

you had a cute and funny list!

foreverserenity

on Jun 14, 2006

! Sorry Zoomba but these were funny!

Dr Guy

on Jun 14, 2006

One other thing Zoomba. Curse Cordelia now. In 2 weeks you will be saying "Yes Ma'am - do you take cream in that?"

amandapearl2

on Jun 14, 2006

that's fantastic! definately one of the best horror stories i've read. I was in brownies too, but then, I'm a girl so it's ok.

Dr Guy

on Jun 14, 2006

I was in brownies too, but then, I'm a girl so it's ok.

My best friend and I had sisters in Brownies when we were in the 5th and 6th grade. We called them Burnt cookies!

Zoomba

on Jun 14, 2006

I'm glad everyone's enjoying the girl scout stories so much

They were horrible events when I lived through them, but even I think they're funny now!

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