Marnie, speak! Good girl.

I met a woman in a bar (she was with some of my coworkers) and we started talking about work, and I complained bitterly and at length about how little my manager appreciated me. A while later, my manager came in and it turned out she was his girlfriend. Biiiig life lesson.

This story should show you just how much I would like a copy of the book. It definitely falls under the category of TMI, so if TMI is too much for you, read no further, fellow commenters.

I was at my gynecologist's and had been asked if it was okay for a student to observe my exam. Being the advocate for science and medicine that I am, I agreed. (We want well-trained OBGYN's working on us, right?) While in the waiting room I met this fantastic, incredibly good-looking guy (This should have clued me in - how many single men sit in the waiting room of the OBYGYN office?). We talked and had a lot in common and I was pretty smitten. You can imagine how I felt moments later when my OBGYN introduced him as the student-observer. Egads. And yes, I went through with it, and no, I did not give him my number!

When I was in high-school, I decided that I wanted to wear my first pair of thigh high pantyhose. I was sprinting through a bus terminal, trying to catch my bus before it drove off, and my pantyhose fell down around my ankles. I was trying to pull them up and run for my bus at the same time. I was SO embarrassed because there were TONS of people there. I finally just slipped them off and ran for the bus. I was lucky to catch it before it drove away.

As a child, I was famously absent minded. I still remember, with gut wrenching mortification, the day (aged about 7 or 8) I got dressed after a school sports lesson in record time - or so I thought. On arriving back at the classroom, I found that actually, I was only wearing my panties, a half length slip, my socks, and my shoes.

I was thronging through a crowded mall with my hubby.

I reached out my hand and instinctively grabbed his hand amidst the crowd; totally pleased that I didn't lose him.

When I got a step further upfront, I saw this guy with an amused look on his hand. Looked down and saw that I was clasping his hand by mistake!

And hubby was staring. Oops.. :)

Now, I make sure I hold his hand tight even before braving the crowd!

I belong to a knitting group, and one evening we were discussing our names and baby names in general. I said that if I had been a boy, my parents were planning to name me 'male-name'. I said I really severely disliked that name, and, gee, am I super glad I didn't end up being called 'male-name'- ick! The woman sitting next to me turned, gave me the stink eye and said "My husband's name is 'male-name'". Funny thing too, I actually met her husband once yet conveniently forgot his name long enough to tell my story...

One time returning to college after a holiday, my flight was delayed, and I was in a tizzy that I might miss the last shuttle home. I bolted off the plane (I mean, first of all, imagine what it takes to "bolt" through a crowd of people in the aisle...) and made it to the lobby, where I thought I recognized others from my school waiting. We all loaded on to a bus, and as we pulled away, I looked around, and didn't recognize anybody. Finally I had to tell the bus driver that I was on the wrong bus, going to some other college in a town I didn't know! The whole bus full of people had to accompany me back to the airport to be dropped off...

Really enjoyed this post & interview, thanks!

When I was 6 years old, I was standing with my mother in line at the grocery store, "helping" her unload our cart. I picked up a plastic gallon jug of orange juice and was showing off by lifting it over my head, yelling, "Mom! Mom! Look!" The elderly lady in front of us in line said, "Well, aren't you a strong little girl!" Either my strength gave out or she startled me, because I immediately dropped said jug which, exploded all over the checkout lane. I burst into tears, the lady (probably sprayed with juice) turned away sharply, and I heard my mother's apologies the the storm of my tears, as she insisted on paying for the juice.

Some days are better than others.

I already have the book, but in the interest of playing along:

In my senior year of high school, I was finally getting courageous enough to start breaking out of the courderoy and fair-isle wardrobe that I'd worn up until then. I chose a bunch of funky vintage clothes with my summer earnings, and wore one piece, a purple bodysuit out of some crinkly fabric, while doing an introduction to a school assembly early in the year.

It was only after I'd finished that my best friend told me the lights rendered it completely see-through.

Oh boy! You made me remember my own "George" incident! I summered as a kid in a small friendly town on Cape Cod. It had a small deep water dock at our small public beach. When I was seventeen I was out at the end of the dock one day when a little sail boat with the Cutest Boy came about into the dock. Like any right thinking person I reached out for the line to tie it up, something I'd done a hundred times before. Obviously I wasn't having a right thinking moment. I stepped up for the line and stepped right over the edge into the water and had to have help being hauled out! As it turned out, his name really was George. After 45 years I still don't repeat this story too often. In fact, my memory is clearly still trying to repress it!

I think my most recent DUH! was deciding that it was time to learn intarsia. I planned to make a sweater. Since I never make any learning experience easy, I designed a garment that had me working with 27 active strands of yarn at once, and decided to make it in Woolease Thick and Quick. There's a WIP picture on my blog at http://kitten-with-a-whiplash.blogspot.com/2009/10/intarsia.html . I did finish, but I haven't tried intarsia again.

My freshman year in college I had an enormous crush on a boy in my English 101 class. Even thought I can't remember his name now, I do remember that he was cute, cute, cute! When he finally asked me out I was thrilled, but the night of the day I was nervous beyond belief. When we went to dinner I only picked at my food because I was so sick to my stomach with nerves (and you have to understand the I NEVER pick at my food!). We left the restaurant and walked to his car and just as I was opening my car door, without any notice whatsoever, I let out the biggest truck drivers belch that has ever been heard. It was deafening and I was mortified to say the least. He gave me a long look and then said, "Well, everyone has to do that sometime." I think we had a good time the rest of the evening, but it was all a bit of a blur because I was so traumatized by my faux pas. Needless to say, we never went out on another date.

I think I have blocked out my most embarrassing moments. Getting caught in a heavy downpour in a genuine Madras cloth dress (very popular & fairly pricy in the mid-60's) may have been one. It was a navy plaid & I actually had navy dye running down my legs & arms. (The desired property of the dresses was that the colors bled & faded with washing & looked better with each washing - unfortunately this happened the first time I wore it so there was plenty of dye to run down my arms & legs & stain my underwear!)

I seriously cannot recall an embarrassing moment. I'm not sure if it's because I've suppressed them, only to be revealed in a hypnotic state, or maybe my life is just one embarrassing moment after another and it's just so everyday mundane to me that I can't differentiate embarrassing moments from my regular life happenings.

Anyway, I was so glad to see you on Shannon's blog tour. Love your blog and I've been coveting Shannon's book!

Do you mean a moment like in high school, when I made a shirt for a rock concert. I waited until the afternoon of the concert to even buy the pattern and material, because, you know, it was my first time sewing a shirt, and how hard could it be? As my friends were griping that it was time to leave, I was sewing the second sleeve on ... upside down, sleeve's underarm to shirt's shoulder. OK, it's a rock concert, I'll just do the overhead fist pump for three hours straight and nobody will know. Fortunately my friends were too worried about their own embarassment and allowed me the few minutes to repair it. Thanks for the giveaway, and for making me relive that moment.

When I was in high school, back a few good years, neither I nor my close friends had cars.....now my father was of the mind and sensibility that transportation was a means to an end, and didn't put much store in what that mode looked or sounded like; he was always tinkering along an old model something or other, just to get him to work and around town. We had, for a time, an old, very tiny Renault and even though this was the late 60's, this little car actually had a crank that you would use to get it "jumped", I kid you not. So one day, my dad is driving me and one of my girlfriends to the local hospital to visit a friend of ours who had had a surgery and was recovering. Just as we pulled into the parking lot, the car stuttered and died. My dad hops out, grabs the crank and as he is literally winding up this car, a bunch of boys from the school football team come driving by and we can see them rolling their eyes and laughing; my friend and I are slid down in the back seat desperate to be hidden from view. Well, the next day, in school, the talk is of the nutcase cranking his car. Fortunately, we'd managed to avoid being seen and thereafter I avoided the car like the plague but my dad would never have understood my mortification....he thought that crank was just the handiest thing. I thought I'd rather die than admit he was my dad! And wouldn't my sons love to have that car now.

I'm sure this isn't my most embarrassing moment, but its one I'm willing to share. On the first day of classes one semester I cane strolling into class with my messenger bag over my shoulder. The same messenger bag that was sitting on a pile of clean laundry before I left the house. Well I reach in my bag to get out my books only to notice a pair of my underwear dangling from the Velcro for all the world to see.

Not sure if it was my most embarrassing ever but since it is fresh in my mind... On Tuesday I went to a big party (my Aunt's b-day, she is very popular!) at the local beach/picnic area. There were tons of people there, some I knew some I didn't. After hanging out for a while I went to use the restroom (since it is a picnic area it was basically a large cement outhouse). After I finished I went to leave but realized that I WAS TRAPPED!!! I could not get the door to unlock or open! I am claustrophobic and immediately started panicking. The outhouse was too far from the main picnic area and the walls were too thick for anyone to hear me yell over the noise of the party! How long would it take for anyone to realize I was missing?! Would I ever escape?! How would they get the door open?!

Luckily I then realized that I had my phone with me and called my cousin to come and rescue me. She started laughing so hard that she couldn't move so my bf had to do the rescuing.

Still no idea what went wrong since he was able to open the door from the outside with no problem.

When I was in college one of my classmates asked if I had eaten at a certain buffet the previous weekend and asked if I remembered a particular server. I then proceeded to make jokes at her expense. After I had finished (and the class stopped laughing) he slid me a note.
The server was his wife.

A few weeks ago I was at a cosmetic store at the mall, and I was so distracted by shiny packaging I did not notice my 2 year old son handing me his sippy cup. It fell on the floor and their was juice everywhere. I tried cleaning it up with some Kleenex at a makeover station and between that and my son going OH NO OH NO really loud, I'm sure we were a spectacle.

I'm a mother of 4, I have lots of embarrassing moments. I just can't remember any of them b/c, ha!, I'm a mother of 4 and have no brain left!!!
I get pretty embarrassed when I'm talking to someone while holding a baby and the baby decides he's hungry, so it's time to pull my shirt up(or down, depending on the shirt and which baby it was).
That's happened enough times for me to remember it.

Embarrassing: being besotted with the guy I was dating at the time, following him everywhere, winding up at the local 24-hour restaurant late at night (or was it early in the morning?), and still following him, going through a door and finding myself...in a men's room, for the first time in my life.

When I was still in grad school, I got an email about a meeting for MA students. I was very annoyed about going, but went anyways. When I showed up, I realized that no one else from my program track was there. The meeting was only for those students planning to get a PhD -- in other words, not me! I sat through about 15 minutes of the meeting before I worked up the nerve to sneak out as quietly as possible ... but not before taking some cookies! And I carefully avoided the department head for the next month -- I was afraid someone would ask me why I was at the meeting and why I left in the middle of it.

I know I spent my entire childhood nursing a keen fear of humiliation, but I can't remember any particular moment. I must have blocked them all.

I've got a humiliating crafting accident blogged here, though: http://corvustristis.wordpress.com/2009/05/07/craft-break-fail/

Now that I don't drink, my number of embarrassing moment have gone down dramatically. Now they're usually of the opening mouth & inserting foot variety. :-)

I didn't really have any cringe-inducing parental gaffes, but I've done plenty by myself!

I sat in on a bicycle advocacy meeting once, back in the 90's. They were planning what to do on Bike to Work Day (a fairly new thing back then.) They were talking about riders going in a convoy or something down the road, to show the numbers of folks involved. The group was brainstorming about how to make themselves more visible and safe.

My bright idea? "We could have a car escort them."

It was only when everybody went totally silent and just looked at me that I realized what a stupid thing I'd said.

I was too embarrassed ever to go back.

my embarrassing moments are ongoing! I never cease to amaze myself!

This just come to my mind after 20 years of blockage.

It happened in 2nd grade. We were sewing a baseball cap. I'd just finished the flap and put it on my head as a joke, when teacher tells me to go get some plastic from the woodwork class. Well, I get up and go to the woodwork class with all the 6th graders in it, get my plastic and head out and just as I'm at the door, someone says "nice hat" and starts to giggle. I put my hand on my head, feel the flap sticking straight up from my head, blush and storm out.

Haa haa.

I was recently embarrassed while returning from a leisurely morning in the on-campus coffee shop -- my boss met me halfway between buildings to let me know that I was supposed to be supervising student presentations and had already missed a couple. That's when I realized that my blithe refusal to carry a cell phone was actively inconveniencing the people I work with. Imagine somebody not being where they're supposed to be, you pull out your phone to call ... then start cursing up a storm because you remember they are stuck in the 1980s. I went out and got a phone the next day.