Mostly, I don’t get embarrassed.
When I do, I shrug it off.
So what if you’re wearing mismatched clothes, or your shirt is inside out?
I’ve done it too many times in my youth and middle age to care one whit.
So what if you order vegetables au gratin at age 16, because you could pronounce it, liked the sound of it, and (perhaps) wanted to impress the rich and stylish college students you’re with, at the posh restaurant in Madras to which you’d been only once or twice before, and then literally blanch when they bring you a horrible-looking creamy stew with some dead vegetables floating in it?
Well, I saw them exchange sly glances at each other, and said to myself, “These are not my people,” then suffered my way through the awful food, and the awful evening, and fled home in relief to my loving parents.
So what if you’re standing there on stage, solo, without your rock group (which couldn’t make it for that Inter-Collegiate competition, due to schedule issues) guitar in hand, earnestly two-plaited, and you’re the only female there, and they boo, because it’s a male chauvinist crowd at an engineering college?
I simply held up my hand, and waited. When they stopped, I sang. Then, they cheered themselves hoarse. One simply has to wait out the bullies in such public cases. I think back now, and wonder how I wasn’t petrified with fright. I must have been completely immune to fear at that moment. Also, I didn’t care about the outcome. I knew they were being pigs. I didn’t get embarrassed being the only female to perform on that stage. It helped that I won the Best Vocalist prize.
So what if you’re standing in front of a crowd of two thousand, all rooting for you and your band, and you forget the words to the song just after you, as band leader, finished the count off?
Well, I simply grinned and said, “Oops … hang on, I’ve forgotten how it starts,” and they hung on silently, and I waited until the words floated back into my head. (Oh, and they cheered themselves hoarse, and we won the first prize).
So what if you the play for which you (as a first year, totally new, 8th Grade teacher) composed the music, did the directing, and for which the students from the last period class worked hard, fell apart because the main actor, brilliant but thoroughly spoiled, ill-prepared and bratty, forgot his lines, ran off stage, ran back in again, then sat on the bed, which fell down, whereupon he ran off again, and had to be persuaded to return?
My students and I simply ploughed on. At least our little music section did well. And the play’s message got through. We even got a few nice words and emails from students and teachers, despite the main actor’s disastrous entries and exits onto and off stage. And that was that.
But then, my embarrassing moments have been few and far between. Sometimes I wish I’d had a few more, then I could make a nice after-dinner story out of them! My husband does, and his stories are brilliant.
The older I get, the more I find that embarrassment is pointless. If a situation is a social disaster, turn it into a story, or, at the very least, embrace the embarrassment caused by it.
In any case, once enough time has passed, no one will know.
And then, in a few billennia, we shall all turn into pieces of explosive space-dust floating about, unembarrassed about being a few hydrogen or helium atoms short of a full-fledged star.
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Embarrassing