Mortification

Here is a list of the times I’ve been mortified; these live rent-free in my head and sometimes I wake up thinking about them:

• The time in grade five when we were playing chicken and Charmaine slid off my back, taking my sweat pants with her. (Also the last time I willingly wore sweat pants.)
• The time in grade seven when the singer guy who came to our school singled me out for a croon-n-walk throughout the whole gym in front of the whole school.
• The time I didn’t hear what the other lane swimming guy was asking and then when I did I didn’t understand his question so he thought I was saying I wasn’t willing to share a lane when really I was asking what the hell he was talking about.
• The time someone left their sports equipment unattended and I was curious so I started looking through it, trying to figure out what stuff did, and then someone asked me if it was my stuff and I said no, I was just curious, and they said I shouldn’t steal.
• The time my in laws told me fourteen times where their dinner guest was from and when I asked him if he was from XX (the wrong place) he got super offended because apparently if you’re Danish and someone asks if you’re Dutch it’s the end of the godsdamned world.
• The time my father for some inexplicable reason did “oogah oogah” horn noises while grabbing my boobs*. I was nearly 30 and very pregnant.
• The time I was getting into the car in front of some shops and hit a patch of ice and fell and then slid under the car and had a hell of a time getting out.
• The time I meant to do a beautiful dive.
• The time the DJ thought I was asking him to sleep with me but I was asking him to play Close to Me.
• The time I projectile vomited up a set of stairs while in my cups, proceeded to go to the loo and forget the first bit, then on my way back to the party stopped to ask the host why she was scrubbing the carpet on the stairs with a brush.
• The time I met one of my favourite writers and remarked about the theme of my favourite of their books, which I’d brought with me to have signed, only to find that what was written on the blurb on the back of the book was exactly what I’d said, and I’d thought I was being original.
• The time I didn’t understand what the other manager told me about the deposit and when I asked to take it to the bank, he yelled at me in front of a store full of customers because I was, in his words, “getting uppity”.
• The time I stabbed myself with a dissection tool and didn’t notice and just kept on doing the dissection with a huge pin stuck in my arm.
• The time I realised the dress my grandmother had me wear for her wedding had a lace bodice whose lace was the perfect size for my nipples to poke out of. No, I was not wearing a bra; it was, they told me, the kind of dress one did not wear a bra with.
• The time I tried on a garment and couldn’t get out of it.
• The time I called the ball in a tournament and dove for it and got under it and bumped it directly into my own face and bled all over the place, and the ref had to stop the match because of all the blood.
• The time my grandmother phoned the home of the boy I was chumming around with for a summer and told him to tell me I had to come home right away because she didn’t know where I was. I was sixteen.
• That time I told someone with degrees in music how to transpose for a different instrument and immediately forgot all my intervals.
• That time I was feeling frisky and, in the kitchen after supper as we were putting away dishes I slapped my spouse on the arse only to find out it was his father.
• That time when I was 12 and I broke my leg and while being wheeled into the operating theatre, dopes up on medical grade goofballs, I told my father to buy me a playboy magazine.
• That one time at band camp when the director, on a Wednesday, said “happy jump day” and I laughed so hard I couldn’t breathe and the director turned bright red and sputtered for a few minutes until the entire honour band stopped laughing.

This is not an exhaustive list.