Have you ever done anything really, really embarrassing? So embarrassing that years, even decades, afterwards, the memory of it turns your stomach into knots and makes you wish you could burrow into the ground like the wretched little mole that you are?
No?
Well, that's okay, because I have enough embarrassment for everyone! Some of the things I've done or said would be hard to top. Some so heinously cringe-worthy that I will NEVER speak of them. ever.
But being a mom adds whole another dimension to embarrassment, because aside from dealing with my own social-awkwardness, I'm also in the middle of a solar system of potentially explosive, orbiting, spinning bodies of embarrassment known as "children".
For those who don't have children, they might imagine that IF they had children, they'd just be small versions of themselves, with reasonably predictable feelings and actions. Ha.
There is nothing predictable about kids. Nothing. You have no idea what kind of words are going to pop out of their mouths, or what insanely unexpected impulse their little bodies will act on, or what demonic forces are at work trying to control their actions.
Because of many years of this, my threshold for feeling true embarrassment has been raised substantially. I find myself caring less and less what others around me might think.
This story is a classic example of something a normal person might find embarrassing, but for me-- well, this is just another fascinating and intriguing aspect of my personality.
Our family had all piled into our 12-passenger van for a 2 hour trip to Circus World, a large, outdoor museum celebrating the Ringling Brothers, located in Baraboo, Wisconsin. In the summers, they have a live circus show twice a day, so it's a good day-trip for little ones.
Of course with a family this large (we had 7 of our 9 kids with us that day), we almost NEVER buy food when we're out to places like this. We bring our own lunch and snacks everywhere we go. On this particular day, that included a zip-loc baggie full of rainbow goldfish. (goldish are good "bribes" for bored, wiggly toddlers).
We spent the usual day out, walking around with our massive double-stroller overflowing with diaper bags, water bottles, stuffies, blankies, hats, extra shoes, picnic backpacks, crying kids, etc. And, as you might know, every time you hit a bump, things inevitable fly off the stroller, leaving a trail of belongings in the dust that you spend half your time retrieving. So it was no surprise to me when, at the end of the day, after leaving the circus tent, we came across a baggie of rainbow goldfish sitting alone in the dirt in the middle of the path back to the exit.
"Is that our baggie of goldfish?" I shouted, scooping it up with one hand as I pushed the stroller past it, not even breaking my stride. Some people might not eat baggies of food they left in the dirt for an hour or more. Particularly in a public place. But I figured no one has messed with it, and there weren't any visible bugs on it. So I thought, "Good enough for my kids." and brushed the dust off it and threw it back in my diaper bag. Hey, it was still closed, after all!
On the drive home we stopped at a fast-food place, and while there, my littlest ones were more interested in eating the goldfish than the kid meals we bought. They ate almost the entire bag. As we were leaving, I went to put the baggie back in my backpack, I discovered ANOTHER baggie of rainbow goldfish.
It was then that I realized that that old zip-loc baggie of rainbow goldfish in the dirt at Circus World was never ours to begin with. And it's likely that the family who dropped THAT bag might have been heading back to retrieve it and saw our bummy, trashy family pick it up off the ground. I might as well have been shouting, "Mmmm, free road crackers!"
I'm sure that family could identify us if they saw us again. You don't often see families as big as ours that also hang out in kitchy, historical-society-run museums geared towards children and that offer free admission with yearly memberships...Okay, actually that's EXACTLY the place you find families as big as ours! We are NEVER the only big van in the parking lot. And obviously, we're not the only family bringing baggies of goldfish, either! Still, the chance we'd be in the same circus-themed museum at the same time again with the same family we stole goldfish from is probably slim, right?
And on the embarrassment scale, it wasn't like the time I fell down a flight of stairs just before my presentation in front of my class at college. ...Wait, I said I'd never speak of that again!
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