My 7th Grade Diary and Other Embarrassments I Can Now Write About (Joy Preble)

I thought this post would be easy to write. I'm a shy, awkward person just generally speaking even if I do my best not the let the world know this. So how could I not have a billion examples to fill this post?

Turns out it's possible to be shy enough (even if you're hiding it) that you avoid embarrassment at all counts. Which I suppose is its own embarrassment, but that's hard to write about. So I don't necessarily have that one huge moment. But here are some little ones:

• That time when I was teaching and my ancient half-slip that I wore with this one dress so it wouldn't cling to my tights, gave up its elastic and just dropped to the floor as I walked across the classroom. I picked it up and kept talking like it hadn't happened.
• That time I got to school in 11th grade and realized that in my haste to get dressed and not be late I'd put on two black shoes, but not from the same pair. I clomped around all day pretending I'd done this on purpose.
• That time I confused one author's work with another's while talking to author number one and felt like an idiot because I'd started to go on and on about how much I liked the book that she had not actually written.

Probably there are dozens of these. But here's my quick takeaway: To quote my Uncle Harry who said the following all the time: So what? If there's one thing I've learned over the years, it's how to laugh at myself. If you spend your life avoiding embarrassment you spend your life avoiding adventure. Okay, you don't always want to be 'that person.' But if you're in the game you will be, at least once in a while.

So go ahead and slip on that banana peel (at least metaphorically speaking). Wave to that person you think you know but actually don't. Mistake something someone says. Write reams in your 7th grade diary about how fate has brought you and David G. together because he wore blue today and so did you. Yeah, that last one is real. David G. -- if you're reading this-- I loved you and your too long bangs. When Mrs. S. sat us across from each other in Social Studies. I knew it was fate, too. And that day I thought you were walking right toward me and I smiled and said hello and you were really talking to someone else? Yeah, I wrote a page or two about that, too.