Embarrassing Story #10

Now, this is definitely a funny one.

It happened at about this time of year (right after the Christmas break), when I was in fifth grade. To fully understand the embarrassing part of it, you have to remember what it was like to be in fifth grade and at a relatively new school. I had just moved to Cazenovia that year, and it was still so fresh and new. I didn't know many people, only had two friends, and was still pretty much just "the new kid."

Some of the only delights I could take in my day were when I had finally saved up enough change to buy ice cream at lunch. I always bought lunch at school, which was $.95, so you'd always get $.05 back when you payed with a dollar. I'd save up the change for the week and then splurge and get a fun dessert like an ice cream cone/sandwich. I'd really look forward to that dessert.... mmm.....

Anyway. Sometimes it'd be problematic, though, because lunch was rushed and you might not have a chance to finish all you had to eat. Unfortunately, such was the occasion on this fateful day. It was the day before Christmas break, and I had enough money that day to treat myself to a ice cream sandwich.

So, I finally went up and bought my ice cream, but- oh no! The period was over! Lunch was over! What was I going to do?! Well, I didn't have the time or manners to even wolf the thing down, so I did what anybody else would've done - ...I put it in my locker.

Now, this wouldn't be that bad except for the fact that I, well, left it there throughout Christmas break. There were several factors to me leaving it in my locker, but suffice to say, when I was sitting on my bus as it was pulling out of the school, I remembered my ice cream sandwich and was horrified to think that it was going to stay in my locker for the entire break.

And so, I worried all Christmas vacation. I was too embarrassed and afraid to tell my parents about what I had done, and my mind raced with all that could go wrong - would it melt all over my papers? Would there be dripping ice cream all over my books? Would there be a puddle outside my locker, and would I get in trouble because of it? I worried myself sick. All throughout Christmas break, I worried about what was going to happen and everything. By the last day I was a basket case, and even my parents could tell that something was wrong. But I still didn't tell them what I had done... until that night when I tried to go to sleep.

I had worried myself into a tizzy so much that I couldn't fall asleep. I was so upset that I finally came downstairs, where my parents asked me what was wrong. And I cried. I cried and cried and cried. Like, really sobbed hard. I was so distraught that I was going to come back to my locker and find all its contents dripping with melted ice cream, and I was worried about all the consequences I would face. Once again, I don't know how they contained their laughter, but they did. They got me calmed down enough to get to sleep.

And, it turned out, it wasn't that big of a deal. It seems as though there are so many preservatives and chemicals in that kind of junk that, wouldn't you know it, it didn't melt. Really. It just stayed in its paper wrapping, and when I got to my locker the next morning, I just threw it out. I think I wiped up a little spot on the shelf where it had been, but it wasn't much at all. ::shrug::

All that worrying, for nothing. ::sigh::



Check back next month for another embarrassing story - "Some Other Story Involving Me And An Embarrassing Situation"

Embarrassing story #9

It's that time of the month again, isn't it? Time for me to share another embarrassing story about myself?

....well, if I must.

This story is actually one that is often told about me, but which I don't actually remember happening. I was too young to remember it, you see. The earliest memory I have is from when I was a little younger than three, and I think this happened right around that time. (No, it didn't happen just last year or anything. Though, that would make it even funnier.)

So, it was Christmas Eve, and I was at my grandparents house. It was evening-ish, and we had all finished dinner a while ago and were just sitting around the table talking. Well, the adults were talking. I don't know what I was doing (I don't have any recollection of this incident, remember?). Anyway, the conversation turned around to Santa Claus, which caught my attention. I mean, it was Christmas Eve! My cousins and I were always pretty excited around Christmas, looking through the J.C. Penny catalog and marking all the toys we wanted. And, it was evening already! We would go to bed soon and then Santa would come, and before we knew it it would be morning and we'd have presents!

So the conversation came around to Santa Claus and then my grandmother, thinking herself quite funny and clever, sneakily put her hand down underneath the tablecloth and knocked on the underside of the wooden table.

"What's that?!", she asked, "Probably Santa Claus on the roof right now with his reindeer!"

I burst into tears. I just kept crying and crying and crying. Not only was I worried about not being in bed and having him come and not give us presents, but I was pretty scared of Santa himself. For a long time I refused to have my picture taken with Santa. (Can you blame me? Haven't you ever seen that scene in A Christmas Story where he goes to see Santa? He's scary!) And now he was on the roof!

Needless to say, it took a while for me to calm down, and I was wary of my grandmother for a while after that.

Lessons learned: Santa can be scary, don't try and trick kids around Christmastime, and never mess around with rules about receiving presents. If you do, kids will burst into tears.




Check back next month for another embarrassing story - "The Slow Torture Of Ice Cream And Its Melting Point"

Embarrassing story #8

So, last week was Halloween, and so I decided to share an embarrassing story this month about Halloween.

It was my sophomore year in college. Every year on Halloween, the Catholic Council on campus (wow, try saying that three times fast!) hosted a "Road Rally" where you'd gather together a bunch of people, cram them into a car, and go on a scavenger hunt around town. I hadn't gone before, but decided that I should do it at least once before I graduated. So on Halloween I joined my roommate and three mutual friends and we stuffed into a car and started on the hunt. One of the first clues led us to a nearby cemetery.

But of course.

It was the first clue, and so all the other cars were there at the cemetery as well. We had to go to this one tomb, where about a dozen and a half other people were, looking for the next clue.

Did I mention that this is at night? Like, 10 o'clock-pitch black-can't see more than five feet in front of you night? Well, it is.

And so I'm up there, with about a dozen other people looking around this tomb when, from behind the nearby bushes, a guy jumps out and yells and scares the bejeesums out of us. I kid you not, we all jumped about a foot in the air and our eyes bugged out of our sockets. A girl next to me swore that she felt a little pee come out. That's how scared and caught off guard we all were. From that point on that night, I let my teammates do more of the investigating; I'm pretty fond of gravity and enjoy my feet touching the ground, and am not particularly crazy about being scared so badly that I defeat gravity.

So the rest of the Road Rally went well, except that we were supposed to go to the county fairgrounds, and none of us knew where they were. Drat! We were forced to ask for directions. (they're here, of course. Who would've thought they'd be on "Fairgrounds Rd."?)

Did I mention that everyone in the car was dressed up in costumes except for me? But hey, I had already been scared out of my wits that night. I was in no mood to go somewhere and ask for directions to the fairgrounds. So the rest of us forced my roommate to. We drove to Big Sheetz (what's a Sheetz?), and made him go inside to ask for directions.

Did I mention that he was wearing a bright pink t-shirt that said "I like boys" on it? In a town where most of the men drive big trucks and have beards and are not too kind at 11pm on Halloween? Yeah. So we basically sent him in to the wolves.

The looks on people's faces were priceless. I'm sure they were thinking, "Crazy college boy!", but it was still funny to see their kind-of shocked faces as a twenty-something year old with a bright pink shirt that had "I like boys" written on it went in, asked for directions to the fairgrounds (which are, of course, deserted in late October), and then left.

Were they scared? Well, not as much as I had been earlier that night. But, you never know.



Check back next month for another embarrassing story - "A Knock Of Doom And A Little Boy Crying (The Little Boy Is Me)"

Embarrassing story #7

So, for a reason that's escaping me at the moment, I ended my last embarrassing story with a promise to share a story about myself and girls. The story I had in mind happened in August of '95, so I think I was thinking, "Hmm, it was just August, and I remember a story from August, so I'll share that in October."

And so it's October, and time for me to share that story.

The story takes place at camp. I spent a week there in '95, like I had for the previous several summers. I was still relatively young, and so didn't really appreciate camp for all that it could provide; spiritual growth and renewal, etc... Mostly, I went to camp for the fast friendships that would develop in such a tight-knit community.

I also went because, well, there were girls there. Cute girls.

...and so, over the week at camp I had developed several crushes. How could you not? I was geeky (as has been previously documented on this blog), and a lot of these girls were so carefree and open, and would actually talk to me as if I was a real person! This was big news. The even bigger news, though, was that there was going to be a dance at the end of the week, on Thursday night. Thursday night. The last night at camp. The night when you hoped to get to talk to the girl you had a crush on. So finally, Thursday night came, and with it, The Dance. The Dance was in full swing, and the group of us guys were right in the thick of things.

Well... not exactly. Unless if you take "in the thick of things" to mean "against the wall afraid to dance or even talk with any of the girls we admired." We were scared of rejection, I guess. At any rate, there were some of us that would keep going outside to get some fresh air and hang out and talk about how nervous we were. One time when we were all outside, this one girl came up to me and asked if she could talk to me.

I think I was so nervous that I almost threw up in my mouth. ....but luckily, that didn't happen. What did happen was that she said that one of her friends wanted to dance with one of my friends, and asked if I could help prod him to ask her if she wanted to dance. So I did. He was really reluctant. I can't say I blamed him. After all, he had a crush on her all week too, and was scared that she didn't like him. I tried to convince him that she must, otherwise this girl wouldn't have come to me. So I talked to the girl again and said that I thought he was going to ask her friend to dance. Well, he didn't. What did happen was that the girl came and asked him to dance. He glanced over and me, and I wordlessly urged him to. He did. I felt so good that they we were going to dance, and that I had done something to help, even though it was small. So I go outside and just look up at the stars, when I hear a voice behind me.

It was the girl that had asked me to talk to my friend on behalf of her friend. She said how nice it was that they finally got to dance, and I said that yeah, it was. Then, she... she held out her hand and asked if I wanted to dance.

....whoa. No way. Me? Dance? Nonononononono.... not me. She couldn't be serious, could she? But she was. I was so caught off guard, I didn't know what to do. So what did I do?

I mumbled something about not being able to dance.

She persisted, and said that she didn't really know how either. She kept her hand out there and asked again if I wanted to dance.

...but, embarrassingly, I mumbled once again how I didn't know how to dance. And she went inside. And that was that.

So you see, I am truly someone that goes out of his way to embarrass himself. What was there to lose from dancing with this girl? Nothing. But did I do it? Heck no! It was stupid, and it was embarrassing because I didn't feel like I could even look at her the rest of the night & Friday without feeling shame.

Girls and I haven't always mixed, that's for sure. But hopefully you can learn from my mistakes.


Check back next month for another embarrassing story - "In Which I Get Scared And, With Help, Scare Others"

Embarrassing Story #6

Well, I can't believe that I've been doing this for six months now. In that short amount of time, we've covered how big of a geek I am, that I can be chased by young boys with squirt guns, am afraid of the Easter Bunny, cried over a big hamburger, and how I kissed somebody else's grandmother.

Yeah.

This month, I'll just be sharing some random things that happened to me when I was at camp on August 10th. First, as a background, I have to mention several things: 1) It was the second to last week of camp, and I was drained physically and emotionally. I had some situations that week that were challenging, and it's not like I had been lying around eating bon-bons before that. 2) Bugs temporarily take over the site sometimes. During Staff Orientation, it was caterpillars that were hanging off every railing, huddled into swarms on trees, etc. The last few weeks of camp it was these little centipede-like things that were crawling around everywhere, mostly along the shoreline and (very inconveniently) on the pier. 3) Birds sometimes nest in places they shouldn't nest. Barn swallows, in particular, are pretty stupid and always build their nests in the most awkward places on site - the Galilee South porch, and the entrance to the chapel. This means that, from time to time, birds fly into the chapel during Chapel.

So the stage is set. We have centipede-ish things all around site, and a bird flying into the chapel. It's breakfast on August 10th, and I'm happily eating my French Toast Sticks, unaware that things are going to get worse from here on out. Then, all of a sudden, I feel something drop onto my head. More than slightly freaked out, I brush my hair, and onto my plate plops...... .....a centipede-ish thing. ......ugh. Gross! ....it was so disgusting that I am still recoiling in revulsion. I get it off my plate, kill it, and get a new plate. But by then I'm flipped out, so I keep looking up with horror, expecting a ceiling tile to come crashing down upon me with several thousand of these little wormy things to crawl all over me (ugh, just writing about them grosses me out ::shudder::). This was the beginning of my day.

The crowning moment, though, happened after all the craziness of the day had finished. The kids had gone home, we had cleaned the buildings, and we gathering in the chapel for a short meeting followed by a closing service for the summer (many staff were leaving after that week). I came in hot and sweaty, and just "done". I had just sat down to relax for a bit when the bird, the infamous Barn Swallow, flew in the chapel. A moment later...

....plop!

Onto my shoulder. I glance over to verify and... yes, it had pooped on me. ::sigh:: ...I'm pretty sure worse things could've happened to me. Actually, I'm positive that something much worse could've happened to me. I have a good life- God has blessed me greatly. But, at that moment, the combination of having a centipede/worm-thing land on my head that morning and the tiredness of camp was just... well, it felt like it just wasn't my day.

So you can add that to embarrassing things you now know about me - I've gotten worms in my hair, and have had a bird poop on me.

Just wait 'til you hear my story for October: "I Can't Believe I'm Going To Share A Story About Girls"

It's that time again - another edition of "Embarrassing stories about Kevin"! So, as I was thinking about what to write this month, I figured I'd delve back further into my past than last time. It took me a while to think of something, but then I remembered a couple of things that happened to me one 4th of July weekend when I was about 10 or 11.

I was at my friend Dennis' house, in Chittenango, NY (near Syracuse). I had just moved away from Chittenango either that year or the year before (it depends on if I was 10 or 11 at the time), but Dennis and I still hung out every once and a while. For his family, 4th of July was a big deal. They'd have a big bar-b-que at one of his grandmother's houses in Manlius, and enjoy the parade and go to the games, rides, and other stuff in a nearby park. Then, we'd stay for the fireworks and have a grand 'ol time. You get the picture. It was generally a great day, with the only major annoyance being "Glenn" from the Jeopardy (1987, 5.25" floppy disk) game we'd play on his grandmother's old computer. Man, just thinking about Glenn now makes me riled up. I really wanted to beat that guy up.

Anyway. So on the 3rd, I went over to Dennis' house to play some video games, talk about girls, etc. For dinner, his dad had made steak. Mmmm, steak. So we sit down to eat it, and... and as I'm eating some salad, his dad reaches over the table and starts to cut up the steak for me. Not Dennis too, just me....... and Dennis' five-year-old sister. I felt like I was an inch tall. I felt so embarrassed, and a little upset. I was like, 11! I could my own meat, thank-you-very-much! I wasn't two years old or something, I was... I was.... I was a man! Yeah! How dare he cut my meat up for me? Man!

Suffice to say, I just felt really embarrassed because I didn't understand why he'd do that. To this day, I'm not really sure. ......but the embarrassing part of the weekend wasn't over yet. Oh, no it wasn't. The next morning, we go to his grandmother's house to prepare for the bar-b-que. And as we're coming in, his grandmother introduces herself to me (even though I knew I'd met her before), and... then here's the weird part - leans in for a kiss.

....yeah. She did one of those grandmotherly things where they lean in and you're supposed to kiss them on their cheeks. So there I was, petrified, as this old, wrinkly woman is coming towards me.... what was I to do? .........so I bit the bullet. I kissed her cheek.

Dennis snorted and laughed. He wouldn't shut up about it that whole day, and I kept thinking to myself, "Ugh, I kissed a strange grandmother!" .....but such is life when you're 11. You don't want somebody else to cut your meat up for you when you're old enough to do it yourself, and you don't want to kiss somebody's wrinkly grandmother. And when you do, it's just weird. And embarrassing.


Check back here sometime in September for the next embarrassing story: "Friday, August 10th, 2007 Just Wasn't My Day"

Embarrassing Story #4

Embarrassing Story #3

Several weeks ago there were four or five of us talking at Youth Group and it came out that a few of those present had never seen "Star Wars".

I almost had a heart attack.

Never......seen......Star Wars? Is such a thing possible? How does one get so far through life without knowing about such an important cultural influence? It's like not knowing who won World War II! (We did, by the way)

I, having seen Star Wars many (many, many, many) times, was appalled by this ignorance. I made my surprise quite known, telling everyone how important Star Wars was and how you really needed to see it because it had such a great societal impact, and then someone let it slip: "Wow, I never realized you were such a geek!"

::sigh:: .....yes, I am a geek. I admit it. I may have not seemed like it too much when I first arrived, but you were bound to find out sooner or later. I can be quite geeky, in fact, and have been for a long time. Let the record show:

Geeky Childhood Event #1:

When I was in first and second grades, my brother and I were babysat after school by this woman who had three children of her own. All of them took karate, and they were good. There were a bunch of us that got babysat at her house, and the babysitter's kids would teach us all some of the karate moves they had learned. Then we'd spend the rest of the afternoon beating on each other for a while until our parents picked us up. It was pretty fun. Filled with confidence over my new-found, sweet moves, I made a poster for my non-existent room (I shared a room with my brother). It had a pixelated picture of a yin-yang and said in all its Apple II glory: "NINJA MASTER: DO NOT ENTER".

Geeky Childhood Event #2:

In third grade, I became almost obsessed with taking things apart and making other things out of them (I think I wanted to be an inventor). Pens, rubber-bands, thumb-tacks, the little swively-feet-things that are on the bottom of chairs to make the chair sit flat if the legs aren't straight: it didn't matter what it was, my friends and I would find something to do with them. We tried to form a club around making such devices, but then the teacher told us that we had to let anyone be in our club if they wanted to join. So we kind of disbanded; what's the point of a club if you can't exclude people? My crowning invention was the Thirst-No-More Pen. It was a regular pen with the ink tube cut off where the ink stopped. Then I inserted a straw which was plugged at the bottom, filled with water from the drinking fountain, and plugged up again on the end. This way, if you were in the middle of class and got thirsty, you didn't have to get up and go to the back of the classroom to the drinking fountain- you just drank from your pen! I was brilliant! ....that is, until the bottom plug leaked and water spilled all over your desk and the teacher came over to see what was wrong and you had to explain that you were wasting time working on this stupid invention instead of doing your spelling assignment. Oh well.

It was also during this year that I wrote a short instruction manual (two pages, single-spaced) about how to make a laser gun and how to "be cool." (All attempts on my behalf to actually become cool have subsequently failed.)

Geeky Childhood Event #3:

In fourth grade, I thought I would make a security system for my desk at school. After all, somebody might want to steal my $.75 or something that I had stashed in it. So I put this coil of wire around my desk and connected it to a series of batteries; a mild current could shock any intruder! Ha ha ha! I rule! ......until I came in one Monday and my teacher had thrown all of it away and yelled at me for keeping a lot of junk in my desk. ::sigh:: She just didn't understand being a kid.


....and those are just a few stories of my geekiness at a young age. There are probably more, and they certainly increase in frequency as I've gotten older. So yes, I am a geek. But seriously, you've gotta rent Star Wars.




Keep checking back here for the next embarrassing story: "Walking To Sheetz Will Never Be The Same Again"

Embarrassing Story #2

Yes, it's that time again- another embarrassing story about Kevin!

This little tale once again comes from my early childhood, when I was living along the Erie Canal in Chittenango, NY. (Wow, I'm starting to sound like my mother. For as long as I can remember, she would always tell stories that began with, "When I was a little girl back in Ohio..." ...wow.) So I was like, four or five, and I was supposed to be sleeping one night.

But I wasn't. For some reason, I couldn't fall asleep. I'm not sure what it was that kept me from going to sleep, since it couldn't have been too early (7:30, 8pm?). Perhaps it was watching some strange cartoons, like Banana Man. Wait... you don't know Banana Man? ...well, that's okay. (Kids these days!) Anyway... I couldn't fall asleep for the longest time, but eventually I did.

I wish I hadn't. I had such a hard time falling asleep that I didn't have a normal dream: I had a nightmare. All I know is that it was dark - like I was in some huge warehouse that was pitch black except for a single, small spotlight shining in the middle. So I was surrounded by darkness, and began to walk toward this little light. And I remember feeling creeped out: I felt like there was an orchestra nearby that was playing that kind of freaky, "Someone's going to come up behind you!" music. But no one did.

Then I saw it. As I came closer to this place where the spotlight was, and the creepy music got louder, I saw it. The... the... the biggest hamburger I'd ever seen in my entire life!!! It was massive: several stories high, way bigger than I could ever hope eat in my lifetime. It seemed so foreboding- as if it could do something to harm me; I was terrified. But what was I to do? There was no hope that I could fit any piece of it in my mouth! I was only five! I was going to be killed by this giant hamburger and there was nothing I could do to stop it! It was hopeless, simply hopeless.

And that's when I woke up, crying. I ran downstairs where my parents were watching TV. I was sobbing and started babbling to them about my dream, where this giant hamburger was trying to kill me and I COULDN'T FIT IT IN MY MOUTH!!! ....well, as I mentioned in my last story, my parents were great and were probably stifling their laughter as best they could, and just did their best to comfort me and convince me that I wasn't going to die, least of all at the hands of a giant hamburger.

Ahhhhh. Parents are so comforting.



Keep checking back here for the next embarrassing story: "Being A Geek At A Young Age"

Embarrassing Story #1

Keeping with the facts that last Sunday was Easter and that I promised to put some embarrassing stories about myself up here, I am about to share a story which not too many people know.

It takes place when I was about five or six or so and was living in Chittenango, NY, right next to the Erie Canal. It was a smallish house, and my brother and I shared a room decorated with Disney characters (jeez, how many embarrassing things am I really giving away here?).

Anyway. When I was little, I apparently was easily scared/bothered by things that didn't look like mom or dad or, you know, normal people. So around Easter, you hear of this "bunny" that comes to leave you candy, right? The Easter Bunny. The bane of my existence. So this one year, when I was five or six (seven? eight? twenty?), I think I refused to sit on his lap at the mall and subsequently cried when my parents attempted to get my picture taken with him anyway. Back at home, I was so scared of the Easter Bunny that the night before Easter I was crying and telling my parents that I didn't want him coming in our house. I wouldn't go to sleep until my parents had written a note to the Easter Bunny and taped it up on the front door for him. It said something along the lines of: "Dear Easter Bunny, please don't come in our house. I'm scared of you. Please just leave the Easter baskets out on the porch." (I'm sure my mother could quote it word for word). My parents, being great and humoring their stupid, crying kid, dutifully taped up the note and, sure enough, when I woke up the next morning the Easter baskets were out on the front porch just as I asked. Kevin: 1, Easter Bunny: 0.

....now, my memory fails me as to if this was the only time this happened or not. I can only remember one year when I asked them to put the note up, but maybe it happened for a few years. I don't remember. My mom still has the note tucked away in some box somewhere, and occasionally brings it out to embarrass me.

I know, I know... scared of the Easter Bunny? Who's scared of the Easter Bunny? ....well, I was. And I still kind of am. I mean, just look at that picture above. Bunnies are supposed to be small... how would you feel if you really saw a 6' rabbit? That's right, you'd freak out and call the cops. And who, in their right mind, lets a 6' rabbit roam around in their home? Not me, that's who. It's not that I'm ungrateful or anything; just drop the candy on the porch and get off my property before I get my dad's gun.



Keep checking back here for the next embarrassing story: "Dreams Don't Have To Make You Cry"