It was a bright sunny day, and we had been lured outside for an assembly on the disadvantages of drinking and driving (you know, death.) My thighs were burning on the hot metal bleachers of our high school’s football field as I searched the area around me for a friendly face. Finally after the assembly was over and we were all nice and uncomfortable, we were set free to return to the building and classes within.
I met up with Angel and Laura and headed back toward the building.
“Why are you wearing a skirt?” Laura inquired.
“Because, I own no other form of khaki.” God bless Mr. Bushey and his insistence that we wear khaki bottoms and blue shirts in anticipation of the choir concert that night. We continued walking, me clunking along in my trendy chunk heeled sandals. We were soon surrounded by a myriad of other friends, talking about anything and everything but the assembly as we walked the five minute distance back to the high school building.
We were some of the first to escape the bleachers, so we would be the first back to school.
We reached a curb that needed stepping over in order to cross the parking lot. My sandals met with the concrete, and suddenly, I was no longer standing on my feet. Instead, my face was grazing a “Handicapped Parking Only” sign and my hands were skidding through the dirt while five hundred to a thousand pairs of eyes behind me got a view of my Winnie the Pooh underwear.
Stunned silence.
Laughter.
Hilarity.
Humiliation.
Soon, I too was cracking up laughing, although seething on the inside. I stood up, brushed my hands together, pushed my skirt back down, and continued my fake laughter until we made it back to school.
This event may seem like nothing more than an embarrassing moment. However, we have all been that awkward teenager (and if you haven’t yet, hold on, you’ll get there,) desperate to be accepted by our peers. I, however, was and am an extremely clumsy girl. Until this point, I was too embarrassed at constantly tripping and falling to find humor in the situations. Even at this point, I was still incredibly humiliated.
I have had many experiences similar to this, but most were not quite so extravagant. In middle school, Laura and I were standing on top of the bleachers in the gym, and my foot slipped, allowing me the exciting and painful experience of falling head over heels down the entire length of the bleachers, landing next to a boy who remarked, in language that I am not comfortable repeating, that I was not a very smart or graceful girl.
That same year, while I was at a youth group event in the gymnasium of my church, we were listening to a song that rapped “Jump in the house of God.” I had an excessive amount of energy and thought, “Hey, I’m in the house of God, I’ll jump.” Well, in my jumping and spastic “dancing” I lost the ability to properly see in front of myself and did not realize my proximity to a neighboring classroom. As a result, I was suddenly bouncing backward from a doorframe after hitting my head on it, landing on my backside. I was laughing, but only to cover up the fact that I was crying, both out of embarrassment and pain. Amazingly enough, my forehead suffered less damage than the thick metal doorframe that it had been introduced to moments before. I walked away with a slight scratch and a bump; the doorframe remains permanently dented.
Sometimes I wonder when all of this clumsiness began. It seems to me that it began the moment I learned to move. When I was very young, during my elementary years, I experienced perhaps some of the original instances in which I was able to allow my face to meet other objects—doors tables, sidewalks. On one particular morning, I got off the bus and headed into school, and someone ahead of me pulled the door open very strongly, hitting me in the forehead, knocking me flat on my butt. Slightly confused and hurting, I stood up and walked into the building. That afternoon the temperature dropped significantly, depositing layers of snow and ice around at what seemed like random intervals. As I stepped off the bus to return home, my foot reached one of these ice patches, causing me to slip and fall landing, of course, face first onto the road, hitting my head in the same spot as it had been hit that morning.
I think what is most surprising about all of this, is that I have never suffered a concussion.
I have fallen through chairs, hit my head on flower planters (landing in other flower planters), tripped over stairs, tripped over my own feet, tripped over nothing at all. All in all, I have led a very clumsy life, but like most of us struggling to deal with uncomfortable moments, I was never able to laugh at myself. I only saw the pain and the embarrassment of being laughed at, and was constantly ashamed of myself for my awkwardness.
At last, I had been given the opportunity to laugh at myself rather than just be humiliated.
A few hours after the lovely outdoors presentation, (plus that whole don’t drink and drive thing,) Angel and I were headed into the cafeteria for lunch.
I paused and grabbed her arm at the door. “I’m still so embarrassed.”
“Don’t worry,” she comforted me, “nobody even remembers.”
You’ve seen movies before where something awkward happens to a character and there is an over the top reaction, right? This next moment, I felt, was straight out of a movie.
I was surrounded on both sides by rows and rows of tables of students. The moment I walked in, there were all those eyes again. A pause… then fingers pointing and laughing. I particularly remember one red-headed boy who was standing and pointing, laughing, and yelling obscenities at me.
“Or… maybe they do remember,” she chuckled. I walked head down, to our back corner to eat. Once we were back there, we laughed about how ridiculous the entire situation had been.
This day was an important day to me, because this was the day I learned to laugh at myself. If I would laugh about something later, why not laugh now? Rather than allow my pride to be bruised along with the rest of me, I could find enjoyment in it. Because lets face it—I was going to fall again in the future. So I laughed along with everyone else. I told the story to the few who were not there to witness my moment of grace, and laughed when they did.
Now, I take a small sense of pride in my complete and utter lack of poise. When I fall, I might get up and take a bow. Thank you folks, I’m here all week. Try the roast beef. Seriously though, who doesn’t take some sort of pleasure in seeing somebody fall? (With the obvious exception of children, the elderly, and those with handicaps.) I’m one of the lucky few who get to witness these things on a regular basis. I then get to enjoy a laugh at my own expense and if I make somebody else laugh, that’s even better.
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