How Embarrassing...

I was recently asked by a friend, "Susannah, what is your most embarrassing moment?"

I couldn't think of a thing. I felt just like I would if I were on "Wheel of Fortune". Sure, I can solve those puzzles with amazing ease from the comfort of my couch, but if I were face to face with Pat, Vanna and Wheel, I probably couldn't solve a Prize Puzzle with one missing P.

DRINKING MARGARITAS WITH A TOWEL BOY NAMED _EDRO AND WATCHING THE WAVES ROLL IN.

"Um, Pat, is-is-is it, um,  "drinking margaritas with a towel boy named Kedro and watching the waves roll in?"

"No, dumb ass, its PEDRO, not KEDRO! PEDRO! Send this weakling away before I get sick," says Pat.

The point is, I freeze under pressure. I couldn't even come up with one embarrassing moment on the spot.

But, once I was in the car, embarrassing moments began to flood my mind.

There was the time I casually threw up under a card table in the middle of playing poker. What about the time a kid pushed me in some bushes in the 3rd grade and I got stuck and all the teachers had to run and pull me out? Oh, yeah, just yesterday I scraped my kid off the floor in Target after he had a meltdown and proceeded to spank him in front of complete strangers.

But, there are three times that totally outweigh the rest. You want to know what they are?

I was a big girl from the age of 8-13. My mother can cook. She can cook well. Really well. She cooks down home southern food. During that time, I gorged myself on mashed potatoes and biscuits and pancakes and casseroles. You know, yummy carbohydrate stuff. And my waist line expanded. And it expanded some more. And before I knew it, I was 12 years old, weighing as much as my grown mother, shopping in the women's department and being made fun of on a daily basis.

It wasn't until the age of 14 when I hit a growth spurt that I was tall instead of round.

When I walked into high school for the first time, the first day of ninth grade, I was nervous as a long tailed cat in a room full of rockers. I was insecure, I didn't know where I was going, I had entered a whole 'nother world. And I looked like a whole 'nother person. Thank the Lord for that growth spurt.

There was a super cute kid in one of my classes that decided to shout out, in front of his super cute friends, "Hey, Susannah. We all thought you were a new girl since you aren't a big tub anymore."

I nearly died. My face became a dangerous shade of crimson, and I nearly killed over from embarrassment right there in the middle of this new computer lab. I tried to take it as a compliment. I mean, the dude was saying that I WASN'T a big tub, right? But, he was also implying that I USED TO BE a big tub, right?

What is the fuel to an embarrassing remark? Laughter. And all those boys laughed and laughed and laughed their cute little heads off. Yeah, they laughed. But several of them decided they wanted to ask the "new girl" out over the next 4 years. And I ended up telling all of them to go to hell. If you didn't like me when I was a big tub, I see no reason for you to NOW try to take me down to the damn Dairy Queen in your mom's Buick.

Next comes the time when I was 18 and beaten up by a midget...at a party...in front of everyone I knew. She wasn't really a midget, but I was 5'11 and she was a good foot shorter than I was. She decided to race up behind me, and obviously she had a mini trampoline or some steps or stacked cinder blocks or something, because she actually had to JUMP up to hit me in the eye. It was a petty altercation over a petty boy, but at the time, it was life altering.

After being socked in the eye by someone 1/4 my size, I was then thrown into a swimming pool by her posse of mean girls. As I sank to the bottom of the pool, eye swollen shut, fully clothed in my head to toe 1999 American Eagle ensemble, I absolutely dreaded rising to the top of the water and seeing half of my high school gawking, laughing, pointing at me. But, since I don't have gills, I had to surface, and I ran away. I'm sure the running added to the devastation of it all. It was something that would totally happen in one of those 90's teen movies with Jennifer Love Hewitt.

But, it actually turned out okay. My best friend threw some frozen peas on my eye, and I moved on with my life. Nothing helps you get over a little asshole like getting decked in the eye by his half-pint girlfriend and thrown into a swimming pool in front of everyone you know.

Ironically, my third most embarrassing moment involves a swimming pool, as well. 

Last summer, my kids and I were at the swimming pool at the little resort where we stay on the Tennessee River. When the urge to pee comes a knocking on your kidneys, it's hard to gather all your kids, towel them off, grab your bag so that creepy asshole over in the corner doesn't steal your billfold, and walk a good 400 miles to a nasty wet bathroom riddled with soggy toilet paper and recycled concession stand pizza stench from somebody's latest BM. I do not, do NOT, condone pissing in pools, but this was one of those times where I just couldn't hold it, and I couldn't stand the idea of doing all that relocating. My family had also disappeared somewhere, so I didn't have anyone to watch my kids so I could slip off to the restroom. So, as I was holding my youngest kid on my hip, watching the other kid running around in the shallow end, I made my way to the deeper end of the pool and I peed.

Only I forgot I was taking B Complex Vitamins.

B Complex Vitamins make your urine neon orange/yellow.

I was surrounded by orange and yellow water. In a resort pool. With people staring.

My first instinct was to blame it on my kid, but I knew people would be concerned that my child was peeing in neon. I also knew that one of the ladies over at the picnic table was a pediatrician, so I didn't want to scream out, "His pee is neon!" and have her running over and wanting to do lab tests on him in a lounge chair. So I violently splashed around as much as possible to stir up the water and break up the neon hue and I ran out of the pool.

People laughed.

I love for people to laugh with me. Not at me. 

And when I was called a big tub, punched by Smurfette and pissing neon in a public pool, people laughed at me.

That, my friends, are my three most embarrassing moments.