Naked Nightmare Becomes Reality

We've all had that nightmare. The one where you walk into your classroom and everyone starts to laugh because for some ungodly reason you've come to school totally naked, not even a sock to your name. Then we wake up in our cosy beds, sighing with great relief because it was only a nightmare. Yeah well my nightmare became a big old dose of reality when I found myself butt naked in front of about 20 of my peers from school.

It's been thirteen years and trust me I still shudder at the memory.

Let me set the scene. It's 2008, I am the typical emo teenager of the era blasting My Chemical Romance way too loud on my iPod through the earphones that no doubt caused a lot of the hearing issues I have now in my late twenties, and sporting the scene kid haircut with coke bottle glasses and more black clothes than anyone can realistically be expected to wear. It is my first trip abroad with school and without my parents and I'm in France on a water sports trip.

Everything was going swimmingly until the second to last day of the trip when we embarked on what was supposed to be a fun filled day at a huge Water Park. I was pumped. I was bit of an adrenaline junkie in my youth and I loved anything that had elements of danger. I was wearing my brand new aquamarine tankini that my mother had insisted on buying me because all my other suits were black and she thought I needed a little diversity in my wardrobe (thanks mum) and quite early on I made a beeline for one of the biggest slides. I remember it being this great big, imposing, bright orange slide and seriously it was huge. It was such an intimidating monstrosity that I was the only one in the four person group I had found myself in willing to take the plunge and I did, head first.

It all went wrong really quickly...If you can fail at going down a slide, this was about as epic a fail as it could be.

It can't have taken more than thirty seconds for me to go from the top of the slide to the bottom but pretty much as soon as my body started to move down the slide, my tankini started to slide down my body and there was literally nothing I could do to stop this. I felt it happening and if I close my eyes I can still see myself as the water rushes into my two piece and pulls it down while I try desperately to preserve my dignity to no avail. When I reached the bottom I can remember lying there on my front for a few moments as the full horror of what was about to happen dawned on me. My top was around my waist and my bottoms were around my knees. There was no way that I could put this right without standing up and showing my nakedness to everyone in the immediate area. I had no choice. I took a deep breath and stood up, bare to the world. All of my friends on that trip and one or two of the teachers who couldn't do anything to help me because they had to immediately avert their gazes once they realised what had happened saw me naked that day. I pulled my two piece back in place and then I made one of the most important decisions that I've ever made. I decided not to care.

What I wanted to do was run back to the locker rooms where we had left our belongings for the day, dry off, get dressed, sob uncontrollably and hide there until it was time to get back on the bus and head back to our campsite, but I didn't. I took control of the situation. Don't get me wrong I was unbelievably embarrassed and like I said when I think about it now it still gives me the heebie jeebies. I could feel the heat in my cheeks and I was aware it had spread to the rest of my face and all the way down my neck and I could hear the 'polite' snickers behind hands of those who didn't want to appear rude (including one male teacher) and the raucous laughter of quite a few of the boys in my year who had probably just seen their first real pair of boobs that didn't appear in their Dad's nudey magazine and it was awful but I refused to be beaten. It was just a naked body. Nobody was dead. When I had successfully pulled myself together I set off to do the slide all over again.

Yep that's right, I went back. I raced back to the top of my thirteen year old self's nemesis and the woman sitting there at the mouth of the slide that gives you the nod signifying it's your turn, gave me the biggest brightest smile that absolutely screamed, 'you go girl,' and I got right back on the proverbial horse. This time I went down it on my bum (you know the one they'd all just seen) and I yelled and throw my hands into the air as I did so. This time when I reached the bottom, instead of laughter there was applause and a lot of shocked faces. I owned my moment.

I learned two things that day.

1. You can turn even the worst of experiences into something positive
2. The human body is nothing to be ashamed of, we all have one

After that it was pretty impossible to make me feel embarrassed, not for lack of trying. The first day back at school after the trip one of the boys in my form class announced to the rest of our peers who weren't there that he had seen me naked and I had the worst pair of boobs he'd ever seen. To which I replied, 'they were the only boobs you've ever seen how the hell would you know?' My classmates laughed at him instead of me and he never brought it up again. I made the moment powerful for me and it took any power that anyone who might have wanted to use it against me away from them.

Henry Ford, founder of the Ford Motor Company, once said, 'the only real mistake is the one from which we learn nothing.' In my opinion no truer words have ever been put out into the universe. Even though it was shockingly embarrassing to find myself naked at the bottom of that slide, I don't regret that it happened. Like it says in the Oops Podcast description (link below) , the best platform for exploring embarrassing moments and their aftermath, 'you f*****d up, now what?' That is the real question. Now that it's happened what are you going to do about? Are you going to let this moment drown you or are you going to turn into something powerful?