Have you ever wished life had a rewind button? Not just a rewind, bur a rewind/erase option where you get a total do-over on something? Like when you say or do something to someone you love and know you are going to regret it later. Or when you made a poor decision. Or on those embarrassing moments in life that you thought could only happen to people younger than you?
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| So glad to know I’m not alone: FB has a group just for me! |
One of my most embarrassing moments ever – gosh I can’t believe I am going to share this for all you to read, but really I just get a hearty laugh out if it now – was in Dublin, Ireland. The year, 1998, Spring time, slightly raining – but of course – and probably a rainbow somewhere nearby. The setting: mid-morning, on a bus full of old Irish ladies and handsome young Irish men. I had just come back from Dingle, Ireland, on the Westernmost part of the island via train, extremely sore from a bike ride I had taken around Dingle peninsula the day before…so I wasn’t moving very well. I had one of those rather large backpacking backpacks strapped to me. I climbed on board, made my way to the back where the luggage area was, turned around and sat down on the little, tinny bar so I could deposit my backpack in the appropriate area. The only caveat to this was the bus decided to lurch forward at that exact moment…that moment before I got my backpack unstrapped from around me. Who would have thought that the weight of that backpack would pull me right over that tinny little bar I was sitting on, right into the luggage deposit area, flat on my back with my feet straight up in the air!???!!! I think I heard the whole entire bus of old ladies take a collective gasp, holding their breath to see what I would do. I can’t exactly remember what happened next or how I got out of my backpack – but the next thing I knew is one of those young, handsome Irishmen was standing over me offering me his hand so he could pull me out. I was smart enough to take it…letting him pull me out to safety…only to see an entire bus of people not quite sure what to do or say next. So some old lady decided to replay what I looked like as I had gone over and apparently bounced: “You were like a great big bouncy ball,” she laughs in her charming Irish accent, adding a little special effect as she bounced in her seat just incase I didn’t remember what had just happened.
Thank God I could get out of that bus, run from it probably was more likely – and never have to see or face those people again. At least I can look back at this moment from my life and get a good laugh at it…and am sure those people on the bus do as well…and you now too. I’m sure at the moment I was looking around for that rewind button in earnest…but at this distance I can just think of it and laugh at myself.
Yet, what do you do when you fast forward a decade and a half and you find yourself still in the habit of making some embarrassing moments? And these happen on occasion in front of people that you still have to see from time to time. Does it take a decade and a half to finally find your way out of your embarrassment, being able to face these people with your head held at least at a normal height – not hung in embarrassment?
I’d like to chalk these recent rewind/erase moments up to my improper upbringing back in rural Kansas and Indiana….but I lived in suburbia not out in the middle of nowhere. Or maybe it was that year of my life I spent in Arkansas?
If not that, then maybe it is due to my arrested in emotional development….but you would just wish at the age I am at that I would have the common sense to at least pretend to be my age?
I understand that a person going through what I am going through is bound to do some things out of distress and discomfort…and even more so if you are the type of person who naturally opens mouth/inserts foot when not under distress. Yet, it doesn’t make the feeling of wishing I could go bury my head in the sand like an ostrich go away. That if I was really the turtle I keep claiming to be, my head would be quickly pulled back in to my shell each time one of these persons was around. In fact, I’m not sure that this is exactly what I’m doing at this point.
Even more so when you have a run in with one of these aforementioned people and you could literally cut the tension with a knife. Even more so when you are trying your hardest to be yourself around this person and break the ice by talking to them, show them you can still stand up even under your embarrassment….and in return you are pretty sure this person has no idea what to do with you, no idea what to say to you and most likely wishes you would just disappear into thin air.
Maybe it is only on my side for I am sure this person thinks nothing more of me and what I deem an embarrassing moment…for I am sure this person could care less…that it is just me obsessing about myself and what this person must think of me, how silly, childish and – did I mention – silly I must look to them.
For I know that as I have matured over these last months that people don’t spend nearly as much time thinking about you as you think or would like them to…that it is really my own insecurities and selfishness that blows things out of proportion. That it is really me just needing to accept the fact that yes, in my mid 30s I can still open mouth/insert foot with the best of them….and that this is just me. It’s not glamorous or attractive, but me nonetheless. A character flaw that I am well aware of and trying my hardest to work on, but that I need to accept the fact that like most things in life – I’m not going to get it perfect the first time out of the gate…and maybe not the 10th or 20th or even the 100th time. Maybe I just need to accept that, as I’ve been writing these past months, I’m a work in progress and like any good WIPs – they are bound to be a little messy, with debris flying left and right, up and down.
And I know…these incidents are great learning opportunities right? Learning opportunities to work on changing my actions so next time I do a better job, speak differently or perhaps in my case restrain from speaking at all.
Yet, even after all that, I have to admit that if it was at all possible, I am still looking around for that darn remote with the rewind/erase button, wishing I could ask this person for a do-over, if we could just start over from the very beginning and just pretend that I had never said or did what I said or did.
“Hi my name is….., so nice to meet you.”
Hmm, maybe in another 15 years I’ll look back and be able to laugh at all the embarrassing things I have done lately … God I sure hope so!
