Thursday, September 2, 2010

I Was Mortified

In response to Mama Kat's Writer's Workshop

3.) Why were you mortified? Write about a true embarrassing moment as though it was happening in slow motion.


It all started on a beautiful early August morning. It was the August before my freshman year of high school and I had decided to join the swim team. As anyone who has participated in high school athletics knows, this involved a lovely little something called “captain’s practice”. No biggie really…just a chance for your captains to get you up early before school actually started and torture you get you into shape. Like I said, no biggie. What a great chance for an incoming freshman to get to meet some people at her new school.

It was about the second week of captain’s practices and I was feeling good. I was in shape and holding my own with some of the older girls. This one particular morning we had ventured out to the track to do an ab workout on these old wooden bleachers (nothing like the sleek new metal ones…these ones even came complete with rusty bolts). The exercise involved laying on your stomach with your hip bones at the edge of a bleacher so that you could hang your upper body over the edge and get an ab workout by lifting it up (hopefully that made sense). Clearly, this requires a partner to sit on your legs so that you don’t go toppling over the edge of the bleachers (see where this is going).

Fast forward to the final rep of the exercise. The sun is beating down on my back and I’ve worked up a good sweat…not enough to look yucky, just enough to look like a toughie. I’m grimacing my way up and glance out of the corner of my eye to see one of our male sports teams practicing near by. I think “hmm….boys….must…look….cool”. Just as this though crosses my mind I feel my partner’s weight lift from my legs as my upper body starts to lower. Unprepared for this sudden loss of weight on my lower body and unable to correct myself, I feel myself begin to fall off of the bleachers (a good 6 ft drop at least) and the only thing I can think is…don’t look now boys PLEASE don’t look now. As this thought is running through my head I hear a horrific noise.

RRRIIIPPPPPP

I land in a heap on the ground and look down to realize that my shorts had caught on a nail on the way down and ripped cleanly in two. As I sat on the ground, practically in my underwear, with dirt sticking to my sweaty body I could only think….what a way to start high school….

Side note: I was completely unharmed (physically at least) by this incident and as it turns out my high school social life didn’t really suffer so no harm no foul.

4 comments:

  1. Great post!
    I am your newest follower :)
    Thanks for sharing!

    http://dwivedi2326.blogspot.com/2010/09/my-childhood-fear.html

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  2. I can totally see this in my head! And I can also imagine how embarrassing! But like you said no harm no foul! And it didn't harm you physically or socially!

    I was reading all these posts about embarrassing moments today and then while leaving the restaurant at lunch today I walked right into a bench... and I knew it was there. Of course I moved it about a foot or so away from the wall when I bumped it! Oh.. it was a busy restaurant too.

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  3. oh no! I can totally relate though only mine involved my monthly visitor while I was out for the VERY FIRST time with my cros country team-it was just the precursor to a TERRIBLE freshman year! lol

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  4. Well you can't get more embarrassing than that! Great post, well done! I did this workshop too, different post though...

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