Question Four

"What is your most embarrassing or funniest moment?"

For a lazy Monday, this is probably the easiest question I could have gotten.  I know exactly the story I will share.  Some of you have heard this before but it's worth re-telling anyway.  I will share this with my daughter someday but if it applies now, please impart this knowledge on your children.  I was embarrassed enough for hundreds and yes mom, you were right.......

I would have to guess that I was in 5th grade.  As any girl will tell you, our crushes start young.  Until this grade, I had a crush on one boy in particular.  We met in kindergarten and lived close enough that I could consider him a neighborhood kid.  No, nothing ever became of that though he will always hold a special place in my heart.  

Something must have happened for me to find a new interest.  He was older ( in 6th grade!!), loud and had the blondest hair I'd ever seen.  He lived in a different neighborhood and I clearly remember seeing him at lunch daily.  I could even tell you where we each sat.  I was friends with a girl that knew him and when I confessed to her one day during gymnastics class that I liked him, she was the first to urge me to act on it.  She said that his last girlfriend ( really?  We're talking elementary school! Do I have to deal with this soon?) looked a lot like me and therefore, she insisted that he was bound to like me too.

I can't blame the next part on anyone but myself.  My way to win his heart was by writing a love letter.  How the heck I still have a fondness for correspondence after this experience, I will never know.  I pulled out my Holly Hobbie stationary and wrote to him.  Now I don't remember the details but I do know that I wanted it to be a secret.  I probably told him all the things I liked and didn't disclose my identity.  I sealed the letter in the envelope and added his address to the front...........and my return address to the top left corner.

I put the letter on the counter where we always put the outgoing mail and my mother asked about the letter.  As I explained, she cautioned me that if it was a secret letter, I shouldn't put the return address on the envelope.  At that age, I probably thought that there was no way to fix it and just said that I didn't care, please mail it anyway.

This, people, is the tough part of parenting.  I don't know that I would have handled it the way my mother did and I don't know that there is a way better than another.  I might not mail it for my kid or I might explain the implications of an act like this but my mom just did as I asked and mailed it.  In the end, I suppose I wouldn't have a story to share today and I wouldn't have learned a lesson if she didn't put it in the post box. 

Mail never gets where you want it to go as fast as it did that time. It couldn't have taken more than a day before I was standing in the lunchroom being teased.  I was mortified.  I was furious and I wanted to hide but somehow, I maintained my composure and looked those kids in the eye and said that I didn't know what they were talking about.

A couple of years later, I was confronted by this boy's older brother.  He wanted to know if I was the one that had sent that letter and even as a very young teen, he won me over when he told me that he thought I was pretty cool.  There was something unspoken between is for years; like he knew my secret but wouldn't hurt me with it.

I started this story today thinking I would tell you something funny but as I was writing, I wonder if that day was one that made a big influence on how I am as a person.  Not that it could possibly be the sole reason for some of my traits but it's certainly interesting to think about the things that I can still relate to.

I certainly learned about being embarrassed that day and I have always done what I could to keep others from feeling that way.  It's awful and the feeling lingers like a dark cloud.  I have a VERY small circle of people that I share private thoughts with.  That girl, among others, taught me that you have no control over the info that others share.  I knew she said something to that boy and when confronted, she never denied it. Once I cleared away that cloud of embarrassment, I realized that it is ok, in fact good, to laugh at yourself. Lastly, sometimes it's the person you would least expect that becomes your ally.