You Are Probably Learning If You Are Embarrassed By Something That Happened To You

In this post I would like to share with you some embarrassing and funny stories. There have been incidents and happenings in which I have been involved which have embarrassed me intensely and ripped my ego to shreds. Embarrassment has been defined as a feeling of self-consciousness, shame, or awkwardness. However, as Miranda Hart, the comedian, says, “The embarrassment of a situation can, once you are over it, be the funniest time in your life.” As you read my experiences do look at the humour in them. Perhaps you may have encountered the same experience yourself.

Funny, Embarrassing Incident No.1

There I was, walking down our famous shopping street and thinking that I was looking chic, cool and definitely very with it. I was wearing a pair of large, yellow sunglasses which I had purchased from a small shop in Leicester Square, London, for two pounds! The glasses are definitely zany and they have a sunny disposition about them. What’s more, they always attract a lot of attention. People always look at me when I have them on. Coupled with the purple in my hair, they must make a statement but I was soon to realize that it was not the statement I had wanted but it was something else!

I could see, positioned further down the road, a group of people standing around a person dressed as a bear. There was a photographer with a large camera who was waiting to take photographs. As I came close to the group, a man in the group called out to me. He said, “Eh, Aunty, you look so nice. Come and take picture with our mascot!”

Oh no! My ego plummeted and was I embarrassed! He had addressed me as “Aunty”. People around us had heard him call me that! Did I look old? Besides, in our country, the term has negative connotations. The image associated with the term, Aunty, is that of a nagging old woman with a bad perm. Gosh! Did I come across as this? All I could do was to smile, shake my head and practically run down the street!

Funny, Embarrassing Incident No.2

I love wearing shawls as they add colour to my outfits. Besides I have a tendency to feel cold all the time and a shawl helps to keep me warm. Hence when I go out in the evening, I generally have a shawl or pashmina with me. I took one with me one evening when His Highness, the spouse, and I had attended a jazz concert at our National Concert Hall. After the Interval I draped the shawl around me to keep warm. When the concert ended, I walked out of the hall with the shawl still draped around my shoulders. I did nothing to adjust it. As we neared the escalator, I saw someone I knew and had not seen for some time. I stopped to greet him. We started conversing and we walked towards the escalator. We stepped on the escalator and we descended. We were three quarter way down when the escalator stopped. It had stopped because one end of my shawl had got stuck in the escalator.

Can you imagine my embarrassment? Can you feel my fear and anxiety at the time? The show had just ended and many people were using the escalator to get to the car park. They stared at me and watched as the police guards came and called for the technicians. The technicians had to get the next escalator changed from an ascending situation to a descending one and to release my scarf from the escalator. Everyone was most efficient and kind. They were worried that my scarf had two holes in it and a lot of grease! I stood by the escalator and watched them work on releasing the strip which had caught the scarf. I could have died from the embarrassment as people kept looking at me.

Generally I do like people looking at me but this was one time that I did not enjoy it. All I wanted was for the earth to open up and just swallow me. After leaving my details behind with one of the officers, His Highness and I made our way to the car park.

Funny, Embarrassing Incident No.3

I was invited to be featured in a magazine and I was happy to accept this invitation. What I had not realized was that it involved a photo-shoot which involved a dress consultant, a make-up artist, a photographer and the magazine editors. I was asked to come in jeans and to bring my own blouses. I had no jeans in my wardrobe. So I decided to shop for one. I went to all the jean shops. Being the size that I am, it was not easy to find one. I struggled, I pulled the jeans up and then I could not zip them up. If you have seen the film, Eat, Pray, Love, you would have seen the actress lying on the floor in the changing room in the store, trying to pull the jeans up. This is exactly what happened to me. I was in a horizontal state, huffing and puffing trying to pull the jeans up!

Finally I decided to try the men’s jeans. It was better. It worked except that the trousers were too long. I had to leave the changing room to ask the staff if she could arrange for the jeans to be altered. As I stared at myself in the mirror of the changing room, I asked myself, why was I doing this, why did I need to humiliate and embarrass myself? Was it vanity? Was it a desire for publicity?

In Conclusion

I would like to leave you with this quotation from Toni Bernhard.

“What is embarrassment? In general, embarrassment is an emotional response to an innocent mistake. The major reason that some of us are embarrassment-prone is that we’ve been conditioned to set unrealistically high expectations for ourselves and to judge ourselves negatively when we can’t possibly meet those standards. A second reason that makes us susceptible to embarrassment is that we’ve been taught to take our cue in evaluating ourselves from what we assume (often erroneously) to be others’ opinions of us.”

Whatever it may be, the embarrassment that I have experienced has been a learning experience!