The Value of Embarassment

We have all been embarrassed before!  We all get embarrassed sometimes, stuff happens, or sometimes people deliberately enjoy causing embarrassment!  I know I have mentioned before about how youtube can help us feel better about our embarrassing moments.  Well my most embarrassing moment happened before youtube existed!  I did not have youtube to soften the blow of the worst embarrassment ever!

It was my 16th birthday.  A milestone parents both look forward to and dread!  My mother always did something extra special for our 16th birthdays.  Yes she is one of those people who deliberately enjoys embarrassing people, especially her children!  I always appreciated that she made our birthdays really special every year, but my 16th year it backfired in a big way! When my older brother and sister got their high school lockers decorated and were left with treats and confetti among their books, I knew to expect something.  My sister had flowers delivered to her as well as a cute toddler picture plastered all over the school.  That's what I had to look forward to, it was kind of fun to anticipate a little extra attention for my birthday since I was kind of  a shy person.

Well when the day came, sure enough, the day had my mother written all over it!  Decorated locker, treats and confetti, and funny baby picture plastered all over the school.  Not only that, but someone dressed in a gorilla suit delivered flowers to me in the morning and then came back in the afternoon with balloons.  Kind of creepy, but this party store in Cedar City rented it out.  It was purely to make a spectacle of embarrassment for someone!  The entire school knew it was my birthday!  Everywhere I looked I saw a picture of me as a baby dressed in my Halley's Comet shirt and a diaper surrounded by astronomical photos!  If you think that is bizarre, I am actually a celebrity in the world of astronomy because I was born in the year of Halley's comet (1985), I was born on Edmund Halley's 329th birthday (November 8, 1656).  Edmund Halley was a famous astronomer and the man Halley's comet is named for.  Of course I was also given the name Haley (but with 1 L), and was the daughter of an astronomer.  I was even featured in 2 different astronomy magazines, once as a baby and once when I was maybe 7 or 8 yrs old.  There were questions to be answered about that picture on the day of my 16th birthday and some of my friends even started calling me "Ed", Haha!

It was definitely an unforgettable day and not just for me, but for my whole school!  The next day was even more unforgettable!  You might be able to predict what happened the next day!  After school on my birthday I became Cedar City's newest driver.  November 9th was the veteran's day program at Southern Utah University where my high school band always played at the program in the morning.  My mom reluctantly let me take the car to school that day and I was able to drive myself to the University for the program.  Let me just say the car was also unforgettable.  A 1985 Chrysler Town and country station wagon with wood paneling, she was a looker!!  She was also an oxymoron in my mind with a turbo engine, haha!  She could also never keep quiet, she had this horrible screeching sound that was ever present.  You could hear her a mile away!  As you can see this car was an embarrassment in and of itself!  Most teenagers in my town didn't care as long as they had a car, so it was still kind of cool!  Anyway as I ran out the door that morning I told my mom "If there is an accident it won't be my fault!"  Boy did I shove my foot in my mouth with that one!  Those words still haunt me to this day!

 As myself and 2 of my friends buckled up to head to SUU for the performance, I very gracefully scraped the side of the car next to me as  I was backing out.  It wasn't a little scratch either, it was a big dent all the way down the side of the car!  Lucky for me, it was a student's car and they did not report it to the insurance because it was an old beater!  There was no damage to my car, thankfully!  When I went to meet the owner of the car in the school office, she just shrugged it off like it was no big deal, like it happened all the time!  That was a relief, but I still had to deal with my parents.  Surprisingly, all I really got was a lecture and an "I told you so" from my mom.  I was harder on myself and beat myself up over it for weeks!  For several days after the incident all of my close friends came to my house to visit me.  It was almost like they were visiting their friend in prison because I basically locked myself in my room everyday after school.  They attempted to make me feel better, but couldn't help laughing!  My best friend of all time greeted me in the hall later that day (Nov. 9) with a gut busting laugh and I swear she could not stop laughing as I was about to cry! HAHA!  If it didn't happen to me I would have been laughing that day too!  "How could I make such a horrible mistake?!"  I refused to drive for weeks until my mom made me run to the store for her the day before Thanksgiving to pick up a few last minute items.

I am proud to say my driving improved after that and I have only ever caused one other accident since then......so far (knock on wood)! That day I felt like I was the only one on the planet that was embarrassed and everyone on the planet had heard about it!  It was horrible!  It was also incredibly humbling!  Up until that point I usually did nothing wrong.  The only thing I can think of that was a mistake was blowing up the new microwave about 4 years earlier!  The new microwave had a popcorn button and that was new, top of the line, I  had never heard of such a thing before!  My best friend and I were babysitting my brother one afternoon, when we decided to make popcorn, I did not notice a popcorn button.  With our old microwave we had to put popcorn in for about 3 minutes and so that is what I was going off of.  In my defense no one bothered to give me any training on how this new microwave was different from the old dinosaur one.  The new one popped popcorn in about 1 minute 15 sec.  so you can imagine what happened when I put it in for 3 minutes!  Black ashes and a smoke filled house is what happened!  Not to mention, the burned popcorn smell that lingered for weeks!  My brother exaggerated a bit by describing his experience as "having to crawl on my hands and knees to avoid the smoke"!  It was not that bad, but close!

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Teachers always told my parents that I was a perfect child.  I was a perfectionist and never a rule breaker, so I was the perfect candidate for a humbling experience.  This car accident was eye opening for me!  I had to realize that I was fallible, I could indeed misjudge and make poor decisions!  I had to realize that I was subject to accidents and mistakes!  It was kind of a hard lesson.  I don't ever remember walking around thinking so highly of myself to say "I am perfect", but other people thought I could do no wrong and I was smart so I couldn't possibly make a dumb decision in their eyes!

After a long childhood with a mother and a sister that liked to embarrass me at times, I decided I just would not be embarrassed over anything anymore!  This is quite impossible sometimes because there are times when I do get a little embarrassed still.  It is very possible in many cases to make a decision about embarrassment.  Many times I just choose to not let it bother me or I just laugh at myself, if it's a laughable situation.  I think this attitude has allowed me to be more accepting of my mistakes and embarrassing moments.  It has helped me to be more open minded about not only my embarrassments, but others' as well.  If you are human they will come (embarrassing moments)!!!

Embarrassing moments build character, they humble us, they might give us a new perspective and empower us with empathy to help others.  They can also provide many laugh out loud memories that stick with us into old age!  They make for great stories for your kids and grand kids!  Have you ever heard the saying "the dumbest decisions always make for the best stories"?  Yes, true in many instances!

It is alright to be embarrassed!  Things will happen that are out of our control and everyone makes a bad decision once in a while!  It is just part of this life.  Embarrassment is one nature's most effective tools for teaching.  So the next time you feel embarrassed, chin up!  Think about what you can learn or how you can help others with it!  Be open minded, let Empathy and Humility be the Empowerment of Embarrassment!