The Public Perils of Getting ‘Laid’ – and Other Cautionary Tales (Most Embarrassing Moments)

Member Name: fruitcake

Product:	Most Embarrassing Moments
Date:	31/05/02 (645 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Embarrassing moments toughen you up and thicken your skin

Disadvantages: Then again, perhaps not…

I had to have it. I’d had the *urge* for some time, and once I knew that it was on offer I was determined that I was going to get it too. The latest ‘James’ album, ‘Millionaires’, would be mine as soon as I could get down to Woolies and get my hot little cabbage clutchers on it. Once there, I discovered that I could have the previous album, ‘Laid’, at half price if I bought both together. Being a huge fan of the band, I already owned this one and so hurried to the cash desk to claim my prize.

“Have I got something for *you*!” said the guy at the till.

“No thank you”, I announced as the queue gathered in force behind me “I got ‘Laid’ months ago…” Eek. You’d think such things would have lost their power to make me blush by now, since I am no stranger to embarrassing moments. Not so.

New Year’s Eve sometime in the late nineties, and with still just over an hour until midnight, Mr Cake and I had already been out since the afternoon. Figuring that a break was in order if we were still to be standing come the magic hour, my husband leaned towards me and whispered something in my ear. ‘Why not?’ I thought, following him out through the pub door. It was late, and approximately minus four degrees outside, so the chances of anyone young and impressionable being around were slim. The deserted yard behind the paint factory a few doors away seemed ideal, and losing my scarf that night was no big thing.

Several weeks later and we were back in the pub again. I was only half listening as a couple of guys we vaguely knew cheerfully discussed something one of them had seen on screen during the festive season. Suddenly he turned to me, and with beery breath said, “You really ought to be in films, you know!”

I laughed and told him that I was quite happy working at the school, adding conversationally “What&
#8217;s *your* job then?”

Struggling to keep a straight face, he winked at me and replied, “I’m a security guard in the paint factory up the road. Nice scarf we’ve got hangin’ on the office wall!” *Gulp*.

Drink was also largely responsible for The Egg Fiasco, which occurred in the Bed and Breakfast House owned by a neighbour. Not for the first time, I’d offered my help, but on this occasion I’d had quite a skinful the night before. So it was that I struggled to fling the eggs into boiling water a bit later than usual, and beat a hasty retreat into the back yard in order to escape the nauseating smell of frying bacon. ‘That was quick’, I thought, returning to find that my neighbour had already dished up and a family had taken their places at the table.

Without a word, they suddenly rose as one, shot me the kind of look that would crack concrete, and filed silently out of the kitchen. Clearing the table, I found that they’d each been served an egg – clap cold, and most definitely very raw. I couldn’t look any of them in the eye for the rest of their stay, and never did confess to my neighbour.

Sadly, my ability to show myself up goes back much further than the moment I hit legal drinking age. Wasting time on the park swings with my best mate on the way home from school, and aged about thirteen, we spotted the class ‘talent’. What’s more, he was walking towards *us*. Wow. “Hi”, he said, taking a seat on the swing next to me.

Tongue-tied and dumbstruck, I amazingly made it to the end of what sounded to me like a normal conversation. Swinging backwards, I thought to myself something along the lines of ‘I think I’ve got away with that one. Best quit while I’m ahead and make a graceful exit’. Swinging forward, I heard rather than felt the ‘Ping!’ behind me as my bra fastening chose that
moment to decide that it had nothing worth holding up anyway. As if it weren’t mortifying enough that two flat padded triangles had catapulted themselves out over the front of my sensible v-necked school jumper, the label boasting a less than curvaceous measurement of 30AA hung limply beside them. Oh… My… God.

It says a lot for my mate that she continued to hang around with me after I’d so dismally disgraced us. It says even more for her that she was *still* my best mate after the infamous ‘School Movie’ incident. On the evening in question, we were taking our slightly younger sisters with us to the school’s screening of the Robert Redford film ‘The Sting’. Her sister was particularly excited because she felt sure that the school rugby Captain would be there. As much as she idolised him, I wasn’t the least bit sporty and had never even heard of him. I didn’t care – I must have been about fifteen or getting on for it by this time, and by now you could take me anywhere without having to return to apologise for it later. Well, almost. Tonight we were just going to have a good time.

As the film rolled, my mate passed a bag of sweets along the line to me. In the dim light, I felt the hand of the lad sitting next to me come to rest on my thigh, and his hot breath in my ear as he said “Gissa sweet then!” I passed the hand back in the direction from which it came, and seconds later it was back again. “Lessavasweet. Go on!” I took the hand, placed it gently on the its owner’s thigh, and, gazing deeply into his eyes, whispered softly “P*ss off!” An all-too-brief respite followed before the hand was back again, and this time higher up. “Go on. I just need a sweet!”

Two warnings seemed reasonable enough to me. I knew what he needed, and felt obliged on behalf of all womankind to give it to him. So I stood up and thumped him. R
emembering too late that we were in the front row, I caught up with the other girls in the toilets, where they’d fled in embarrassment. I was immediately accosted by my friend’s tearful sister. “You didn’t *have*to do that. He only asked for a sweet!” That was when I found out that I’d just decked ‘her’ rugby Captain, in front of the entire school. Oops.

Yes, I bring chaos and trouble wherever I go, and you have to be particularly thick-skinned and immune to blushes to spend any amount of time around me. I think I’ve demonstrated this capably enough now without needing to mention the time I wrote off my driving instructor’s front wheel while taking a corner at less than twenty miles per hour, the time I split my jeans falling off a horse and had to have my sisters provide cover for me all the way home, the time… well, you get the picture…

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