05.07.00

Embarassing Moments
(second in a series)

For those of my readers who don't believe in my true dorkiness (as if this site and its contents aren't evidence enough), I really have done some extremely retarded things. Let's waste no time getting right to the heart and soul of my shame.

It was very simple really, three friends and myself were taking a trip to Atlantic City to enjoy some undoubtedly dorky fun on the boardwalk, at the black jack tables, and in the Black Forrest where my favorite waiter (who played Cher in La Cage in various productions about the strip) regularly supplied us with copious amounts of Oktoberfest Lager, oftentimes on the house.

This time, we decided to take the train rather than make the five hour drive from Connecticut. It seemed at first like a fine idea. An idea born of the desire not to drive home with hideous hangovers, and not to stop and barf at all those rest areas along the Jersey Turnpike named after people I don't know. It also removed any chance of a detour to the Philadelphia Zoo where I inevitably always cried somewhere between the rhinos and the gorilla cages.

So there we sat on the train to fun, blissfully unaware of events to come. (I didn't make that rhyme on purpose.) We were comfortably arranged in those seats that face each other. Two to a side. Noshing on Munchkins and chatting of big money, how on earth Cher hides his thing and wondering if homosexuals become aroused by their own body parts, we were young and we were happy.

Somewhere outside of NYC, an Odd Couple boarded. They were clearly together, but said not one word to each other as they took the seats across the aisle from us, also in seats facing each other. One was a striking young Asian woman, her beauty marred only by two plugs of cotton up her nose. The other was an older paunchy Caucasian man who promptly took off his shoes and placed his offensive smelling sock-clad feet on the seat next to his travel partner. My friends and I gave each other the requisite quizzical looks and continued on with our no doubt fascinating conversation, the details of which escape me now.

An hour or so later after we exhausted the topics at hand, we were lightly dozing off Munchkin overload. I happened to look up and notice my purse was hanging off the top of the luggage rack above us. The purse lurched and swung as we rounded corners and I was vaguely concerned it might fall. As I was on the aisle, I did the only logical thing I could think of. Without getting up, I grabbed it and flung it as hard as I could-- figuring it would swing over the top of the rack and land peacefully out of the way.

It did no such thing.

When I heaved the bag, it flew at lightning speed, not up and over, but directly across the aisle and crashed into the wall between the Odd Couple with such force it sent the cotton shooting out of the young lady's nose.

I was too mortified to even move. The Odd Couple were looking at me, my newly awakened friends were looking at me, and I sat there motionless, hand still perched in the air. As the lady began fumbling on the ground for her cotton, one of my friends said loudly, too loudly, "What did you do THAT for?" as if I deliberately intended to throw things at the pair across the aisle!

My hand was still in the air. I didn't even have the sense to remove it and say, "What did YOU do that for?" to take the blame from me and place it on someone, anyone other than myself. I frantically mumbled incoherently, beseeching one of my friends to go get my purse. I couldn't do it, I just couldn't.

Did one of them help me? Not a chance. They were enjoying this all too much.

Somehow I made it over there, picked up my bag and apologized. The man glared at me. The lady looked as if she would cry. Neither of them said a word. It occurs to me now that they were probably deaf and surely could not even read my lips as I mumbled my, "I'm so sorrys," with my head hung low and turned away from their faces. I can't even imagine what they were thinking. I spent the next 45 torturous minutes experiencing the most intense shame of my life.

The years after that event passed as years do and people dropped out of my life. I am in contact with only one of these friends today. Every now and then he still says to me, "I can't believe you DID that!"

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