I'm a Hot Mess of Cringe-worthy Moments

I am a big ol' hot mess; and when I was young, I was a little hot mess. I've had so many cringe-worthy moments throughout my life, I’ve lost count. Unfortunately, I never outgrew making a fool of myself. **sigh** It seems to be getting worse, the older I get! Let’s face it, some of y’all are shaped to shine, while others of us are fashioned for faux pas. I’ve divided up my embarrassing moments into four parts: 1) 'Younger Years'; 2) 'Terrible Tween & Teen Tales'; 3) 'Dating & Romance Sagas' (Lord, have mercy); and 4) 'A Grown Woman Should Know Better By Now' Moments. Here goes Part 1. Be kind—I was just a kid!

Part One) ‘Younger Years' Embarrassing Moments:

1) When I was a preschooler, I loved eating Twinkies—but I couldn’t say their name correctly. The evil grownups just loved to get a laugh at my expense over this… Often, my Daddy would take me for a treat after picking me up from 'Head Start'. “Tell them what you want,” Daddy, with ulterior motives, purposely instructed me at the counter of a truck stop (where my Mama worked in the kitchen). When I hesitated, because I just KNEW he only wanted the cashier and everybody eating around the counter to snicker at me once again; he encouraged, “Come on, now, don’t be shy. It’s okay, REALLY. If you want one, you’ve gotta ask for it!” All the regulars who knew us, stopped eating and looked our way—with silent grins of eager anticipation on their faces.

Feeling a bit safer looking at Daddy’s reassuring eyes—and REALLY wanting a Twinkie, I finally quietly dared to break the silence of the restaurant, “May I have a Twinkle, please?” **Laughter eruption** I had been betrayed, yet again!

(After that, I resolved to get the upper hand—much to my father’s dismay. From that day forward... I switched to Moon Pies.)

2) When I was young, soda pop only came in bottles. One day, I thought it would be clever to show off to my siblings a trick of how I could suck my upper lip inside the bottle top of my Mr. Pibb, then let go of the bottle and stretch my arms out, holding the entire weight of that Mr. Pibb with nothing but the amazing strength of my upper lip. “Ta da!” I managed to shout with just my teeth and my lower lip. "What a marvelous accomplishment,” I gleefully thought to myself. “This will give me bragging rights over my poor, lesser-accomplished siblings!” But my bravado came to a shrieking halt when when I suddenly realized—I was stuck!

To this day, I still can feel the pain as my siblings all grabbed onto that Mr. Pibb and began to pull and pull, in an attempt to free my upper lip. I became panicked, so scared they were gonna have to bust the bottle to break me free (cutting my face in the process); when suddenly, after my upper lip had been stretched to the absolute limit of human endurance; I tumbled backward, onto the ground one way, while my siblings all fell down in the opposite direction; spilling Mr. Pibb everywhere. "Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, I’m free at last!” I prayed to our Heavenly Father, in sincere appreciation.

My lip was very sore and extremely red and swollen for an entire week! Yet, there was no getting out of going to school. (Children rarely got sympathy for foolish injuries, back in those days.) I spent the next week at school holding my hand over my mouth, to cover the huge, pointed protrusion that used to be my upper lip. Mrs. Gray was in the middle of a lesson about how it was time our class learned what deodorant was and how to use it. (I suspect since there was no air conditioning in schools back then, all the teachers had conspired together that it was time to take matters into their own hands.) How I dreaded the inevitable time when the teacher would call on me and I’d have to break my silence and reveal my torpedo lip… It was inevitable because back then, if you didn’t raise your hand, it was a SURE way to get called on anyway, for an answer.

“Miss Bowen?” Mrs. Gray targeted me like an arrow finding its bullseye. Now, in my Southern school back in those days, when a teacher called on you, the appropriate response was to stand up and say: “Sir” if it was a man, or: “Ma’am” if the teacher was a woman. Ever so slowly I got out of my chair and stood by my desk, dropping my pencil on purpose and picking it up in slow motion, all the while with one hand still covering my mouth. I was hoping Mrs. Gray would lose patience and call on someone else; but no such luck. Because I hesitated, the teacher repeated, “Miss Bowen? What are the different types of deodorant we could use? Do you have the answer?” Y’all, I couldn’t make the “P” or “M” sounds, but I couldn’t stall any longer… I tried my best to answer, “Yes, Ma’am” but, it came out :“Yes, Fat”. **Roaring laughter** As Mrs. Gray pushed me out the door, I tried yelling out the answer: “Fray (spray) and Woll-on (roll-on)!” But, we were already headed toward Principal Leary’s office.

Later that night, after Mama read the note from Principal Leary explaining why I got a paddling; and after Daddy had gone into the other room (I suspect so he could chuckle in private); Mama sat us down to warn me and my siblings about OTHER idiotic actions which she said she had PREVIOUSLY assumed we would have the common sense not to do. One sister shot me a warning glance to silently communicate: "Thanks a lot"; while another sister stuck her tongue out at me while Mama wasn't looking. Speaking of tongues, when Mama got to the part of how we were not to EVER stick our tongue onto the metal ice tray or onto a metal fence-post or anything metal in the winter; she was glaring straight at ME.

(After that, I was always extremely careful how I drank from a soda pop bottle. When they later introduced soda pop in a can, you can betcha I switched! Those soda pop bottles oughta be banned.)

3) At recess, the boys thought it was great fun to twirl the girls faster and faster on the merry-go-round, as we held on for dear life. It was a boy's wildest dream to send a girl sailing through the air, to her demise... Of course, I was the only girl who ever forgot you should NEVER let go. I don’t 100% recall why I let go after the merry-go-round had gathered too much speed… Looking back, that was just craziness on my part!

I suspect what happened is that I was holding onto the tiny funny paper from the piece of Bazooka bubble gum I had just unwrapped, and the wind from the centrifugal force snatched it out of my hand. (I had just dared to learn what centrifugal force was, and now it was out for revenge.) I hadn’t finished reading that comic-strip yet (since those boys wouldn’t give a girl a moment) and I just had to find out what happened to Bazooka Joe. So, without thinking first (which was a bad habit of mine) I instinctively let go of the bar to reach out to grab it back from the wind, but all I captured was air.

In answer to the boys' prayers, I was catapulted about six feet, and got a bloody tongue from my crash landing. Can you believe that not one boy thanked me for making their dream come true? They all clamored around feigning concern, as the girls ran off to get the teacher who was monitoring recess. He sent me home; which was child neglect on his part, I thought, because living in town at the time, I had to walk.

Gasping, I finally staggered up our front lawn, and weakly called out to Mama from my blood-stained mouth, "Your half-dead child is home!" But did I get any sympathy? No. (Have I mentioned that children rarely got sympathy for foolish injuries, back in those days?) Mama just asked, all annoyed-like: “What are YOU doing home?” I related how I was sent to stagger home because her poor, injured child was lucky to be alive! Rather than the hug I deserved, all she said was, “Well, THAT’LL teach you! Now, go put some ice on it.” Then, she went back to her crocheting and watching her TV stories. (She was just at the part where the grains of the hourglass were about ready to fall, on "The Edge of Night".)

The gossip all around the school yard was that I had bitten my tongue clear off. The next day, every single kid I encountered, wanted me to open my mouth and show them. A line formed wherever I tried to go. How disappointed they all were that I still had a tongue! Some of them were quite angry at me for the let-down.

(After that incident, the lesson I took away from all of this was that children should NEVER EVER learn about centrifugal force. You DON'T want to mess with wicked forces like that, kids! It’s like playing with fire.)

4) In 3rd grade, I wore some capris to school for the very first time; they were hand-me-downs from my cousin. (Of course, back then we called them “pedal pushers”.) As fate would have it, it happened to be Picture Day, the day I wore those pedal pushers. Not understanding that I was supposed to wear them with either anklets, bobby socks, or nothing besides flip-flops; I somehow managed to leave the house without Mama noticing that I had kicked off my flip-flops and pulled up really high fuzzy brown knee socks over the bottom of my red pedal pushers, so my legs wouldn’t get cold. “What kind of mother sends me to school with such high-water trousers?” I wondered.

Now that my legs had been made warm, I decided my Sunday-best black penny loafers would be the perfect touch; so I stole (ahem, BORROWED) a couple of shiny new pennies I shook out of my big brother’s piggy bank, to insert into the opening in the tops of my loafers. (Boy, I sure had to shake out a lot of pennies before I found some shiny ones! Why does my brother have such dirty pennies? I knew I should have picked up the ones that fell onto the floor and retrieved the rascals that rolled under his bed. But, honestly, I intended to drop them all back into the piggy bank after school—no time to mess with it, now.)

Anyway, that turned out to be the very first class picture where the photographer asked little ol’ ME to hold the class sign, which displayed the teacher’s name and our grade! At the time, I felt it was a great honor. But looking back, I suspect he did it on purpose, because I looked so stupid! He kept chuckling as he positioned me in the front row and darn near guffawed as he handed me the sign.

I suspect he and Mrs. Gray were in cahoots because she was probably still mad at me, at the time, for accidentally calling her “Fat” instead of “Ma’am”. (Why, just the other day I was rushing down the hall in a hurry to play jacks with the girls at recess, when Mrs. Gray stopped me from running. That's all fine and dandy, but rather than let me be on my urgent way, she decided to use my shoulder for an arm rest while she took her merry time finishing a conversation with another teacher. I couldn’t move; I had no choice but to stand there, as her human arm-rest. The girls were on "Foursies" by the time I managed to make my escape to the school yard! (Yep, Mrs. Gray was obviously not one to forgive and forget.)

Long story short, when the picture was distributed for us to take home to our parents, there I was right smack in the middle of the front row, with those brown fuzzy knee socks ridiculously pulled up over the leg edges of my pedal pushers—looking proud as punch.

My Mama was mortified when she saw it; realizing that every parent would wonder, “Why in the world did Mrs. Bowen dress that poor, sad child like that?” Exasperated, Mama asked me, “What possessed you to put on your Daddy’s old brown socks? Did you think you were wearing colonial men’s knickerbockers, or what?”

Now, to be fair, until that very moment, I hadn’t realized they were Daddy’s socks. This was news to me! I was getting ready to reason with her, “Is it MY fault they were in the top of the laundry basket?" But, before I could make my defense, her chastisement was interrupted by a blood-curdling shriek from my big brother Billy's bedroom: “WHO took my pennies?"

(After that, I was a grown woman before I ever wore capris aka pedal pushers, again; and to this day I still don’t particularly like them. Who's bright idea was it to design something so high-water all your legs aren’t covered? Make a decision, Designer... Go shorts, go pants, or go home!)

Were there MORE cringe-worthy moments in my childhood? You betcha! I could tell you plenty more sad sagas. But, I’m ready to move onto Part Two. Stay tuned next time, for cringe-worthy faux pas from my 'Terrible Tween & Teen Tales'. You ain’t read nothin’ yet!