I was at the bottom of a flight of stairs when I discovered the secret to dealing with extreme embarrassment. The stairs in question were at my high school and the way I had arrived at the base of them was … less than ideal.
Hurrying between classes, I had tripped and fallen, but not in a proper tumbling-down-stairs way like they do in the movies. Instead I had stumbled, somehow landed on my shins then kerthunk-kerthunk-kerthunked on them all the way to the bottom where, legs still trapped underneath me, I tipped over on to one side.
As I lay sprawled in the concrete courtyard trying not to hear the laughter raining down on me from the students on the balcony above, I realised I had only one option – to wait for the ground to swallow me whole. The ground, unfortunately, refused to oblige, so I quickly came up with plan B – to stand up and get myself the hell out of there.
I got shakily to my feet, my mind looping through the mental footage of my fall. As I picked up my bag, I suddenly imagined the fall happening to somebody else (no one in particular, just a generic person) and it struck me how funny the whole thing would have looked. Of course other students laughed at me – it was objectively hilarious.
I may have been mortified but I had also found the funny side. I straightened my back, hoicked my bag over my shoulder and laughed all the way to my next class. Take that, embarrassment!
It wasn’t until another 13 years later that I had cause to summon my shame-busting skills. It was the late 90s and I was living in Melbourne. Back in those pre-internet days, I’d draw a cartoon then take it to the printer for a copy, which I’d then express-post to the Sydney Morning Herald, my employer at the time.
It was a cold winter day but I was warm with inner glow, rather pleased with the cartoon I had finished and was taking to the printers some 500-odd metres down the road. I smiled to myself as I strolled down the busy street, waving to shopkeepers and neighbours I knew, stopping to grab some groceries and my daily juice at a local juice bar.
I finally made it to the printers, where I joined the queue of people lined up at the service desk. Sensing a cold breeze, I put my hand behind me to smooth down my skirt and touched … bare flesh! Not only had I accidentally left home with my skirt tucked into the back of my G-string undies but the stockings I’d put on had a ladder near the waistband that had torn, leaving them with a hole that covered one entire buttock.
While I hastily pulled the skirt down, my mind raced with a montage of all the things I’d done in the last 500 metres. The people I’d seen! The people who had seen me! I imagined myself standing at the juice bar WITH MY NAKED HALF-ARSE TO THE STREET as trams full of people copped an eyeful of my foolishly exposed bumcake.
Then, just as I was about to pull my jacket over my face and race home, I suddenly imagined it happening to someone else. The same montage ran through my brain but this time it was HILARIOUS. Instead of being embarrassed, I thought of the joy I had inadvertently brought to people who witnessed it. What a community service I had performed.
I got my print done, express-posted it off, straightened my shoulders and laughed all the way home.
This was all good preparation for my most embarrassing experience, some 16 years later, when I was living in Sydney. My partner, Tim, had to fly to Canberra for an early morning meeting. To his horror, he slept through the alarm and had no time to call a cab. He needed to drive to the airport himself and needed me to drive the car home. So, still mostly asleep, I staggered out of bed, chucking on the nearest piece of clothing, and got into the passenger seat.
We pulled into the airport just in time. The arrivals area was crammed with taxis and Tim managed to squeeze our car in between them. He leaped out of the car to race for his flight and I ran round to get in the driver’s seat. As he threw me the keys, he looked down, startled, and whispered, “Your boob’s hanging out.”
I looked down and it was true – my boob was indeed hanging out. I had put on a loose black slip dress and somehow one breast was exposed, glowing white against the darkness of the fabric. Standing in a sea of taxis – and in a total panic – I pulled the dress across … but my other boob popped out. With panic rising, I pulled the dress back and forth, exposing one breast then the other like some bizarre and totally inappropriate game of peek-a-boo.
I finally realised what had happened – in my sleepiness I’d somehow put my dress on sideways, leaving insufficient fabric to cover my whole chest. There was nothing to be done but take the dress off entirely and put it on again, and I needed to go home to do that. I tossed my hands in the air then got into the car and drove away.
This time I didn’t even have to counter the cringe. My brain immediately replayed it happening to someone else and it was seriously one of the funniest things I have EVER seen. I didn’t just laugh, I GUFFAWED all the way home.
When I got back I could hear my 12-year-old son in his room. Nearly weeping with laughter, I knocked on his door, saying, “Maxy! You’ll never believe what just happened.”
“Is it about your boob hanging out?” he replied.
I was shocked. “How did you know?”
“I woke up when you were leaving and saw it.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Well, I thought you’d notice.”
He had a fair point. If I hadn’t been half-asleep, I definitely would have noticed and this extremely embarrassing experience would have been prevented.
But that wouldn’t be anywhere near as funny.
