Inappropriately Happy

We have all had moments when we have said or done something that we look back on later and hang our heads in shame or embarrassment. Like the time in grade 8 when we were doing gymnastics in phys ed and I-- a skinny, not-too-coordinated kid-- was waiting in line with the other kids for my turn to run up to the box horse and use a springboard to bounce over it. For some reason that eludes me, I decided that I would really go for it, putting all my effort into it and vaulting through the air like Spider-Man.

When my turn came, I raced down the length of the gym, arms and legs pumping, moving faster than I had probably ever moved in class. I felt confident, brave, and strong, and as I reached the springboard... I somehow failed to jump.

I slammed into the box horse with a resounding boom that sounded like a bomb going off. The box horse was knocked off of its base, toppling over, and I flipped over it, spinning in the air and landing on my back with the entire gym turning to look. I glanced over at the spotter, an older boy from another grade who was sinking to his knees and trembling with laughter.

It was a moment I will never forget, though it is not actually the story that I am submitting for this challenge. As embarrassing as it was, I can look back on this and laugh. I recognize how funny it was, so while it was horrifying at the time, it’s OK. We all do silly things that we can laugh at later, but sometimes we embarrass ourselves in ways that continue to upset us.

In my 20s I was dating a bilingual girl whose mother was English and father was French. My girlfriend was more English-speaking and her brother was more French-speaking, but everyone in the immediate family was bilingual.

Although I live in Quebec and consider myself reasonably adept at French, I am not perfectly bilingual, especially when dealing with those who have a strong Québecois accent. This made me a little self-conscious when dealing with my girlfriend’s extended family, particularly since I tended to already be self-conscious at the best of times.

My girlfriend was close with her family, including her cousins, aunts, and uncles, so I got to meet many of them over the 4 years that we were together. They were all nice people and even if I felt like I couldn’t communicate very well, they never made me feel bad about it and never said anything negative. I'd met enough of them that it was a little difficult keeping track of how everyone related to one another, sometimes forgetting which cousins were brothers, which uncle was married to which aunt, etc

Sometime around the mid-point of when we were dating, my girlfriend received the news that one of her aunts had passed away. She told me who it was, but while I recognized the name, I was having trouble picturing who it was.

A few days later, we attended the wake. It was rather packed with her relatives and there were several faces that I didn’t recognize. I had met what I thought was a large portion of her family, but as it turned out, it was a small sampling. I felt out of place and a little uncomfortable because I couldn’t understand much of the conversation around me. Fortunately, one of my girlfriend’s cousins that I knew pretty well came over and chatted with us for a bit. I’ll call him Pierre. He was a really nice, funny guy, and I felt much more at ease when he was chatting with us.

After talking for a bit, he called out to his father and asked him to come over. I recognized his dad-- my girlfriend’s uncle-- and had met him several months earlier. Now that I was feeling at ease from talking to Pierre, I stuck out my hand, smiled broadly, and said “Hey! It’s good to see you again. How are you doing?” He said something softly in French, kind of nodded at me, then shuffled away. I turned to my girlfriend, still smiling, and she was just looking at me with an odd expression.

“You do know that it was his wife who died, right?” she asked and I went cold. His wife. Pierre’s mom. Not only had I not offered any condolences to Pierre, but I had also offered a big, happy grin to his father, saying how happy I was to see him on the occasion of his wife’s passing.

There are certainly more embarrassing tales out there. If I stop to think a bit, I can probably dig up one or two from my own past. This is the one that makes me cringe, however. Even today I am amazed at how wildly inappropriate I was. It may not have been intentional, but more than a quarter-century later, it still makes me feel awful.