So I'm about 20,000 words into a novel now, and all is going well. I am stuck at one part though. I have a section of a chapter missing, simply saying:
INSERT EMBARRASSING ANECDOTE HERE
I need some embarrassing stories. I've used a few of my own already, but need some more. Whatever is written here may well be butchered, torn apart, and rewritten or incorporated into something else, so don't give me something you're planning on using yourself.
Basically I need an anecdote from your childhood or teenage years, something you wouldn't normally share. The kind of thing that makes you cringe just thinking about it. It doesn't even have to be you, it can be someone you know. It can be funny, but that's not essential, as long as it is embarrassing.
Any takers?
When I was around 9 or 8 we had a game of kickball. I was up for the kick and I was not a great kicker, but not bad either. So the ball comes a rollin' towards me and I ready up. I kick the ball my hardest and start sprinting to first base. I was a chubby kid so I wasn't very fast either. I'm almost at the base when the ball hits me and I'm outed. The only thing is no one threw the ball, I had outed myself. When I kicked, the path of the ball made it so it landed right on me. Everyone laughed.
When I was about eight years old, I was bowling with my mom (she was in leagues, practicing). I was striding forward for the release, with the bowling ball raised behind my back. It was a heavy ball, probably too heavy for my age and inexperience. I swung the ball down low for the release.
I slammed the ball into one of my ankles. This took both my legs out from beneath me. I entered the lane ass-first. I slid quite a few feet on my back. The whole bowling alley erupted into laughter. No "atta-boys" or "are you OKs?" It was tooooo hilarious. For them....
Embarrassing at the time. Very funny to think about, now....
My mother LOVES telling the story about the time she took toddler me to the grocery store and she started talking to a friend, only to turn around and see toddler me pissing on some plants.
removed
Redacted!
That one time the exterminator found the nude photos.
that one time the exterminator gave me a high-five on his way out...i don't even understand why he did that
That one time I pretended to be an exterminator in Kentucky.
removed
removed.
The time I told a stranger on the internet my utmost embarrassing story.
J.Y must be a redditor.
That one time...
The time I was on the internet on Halloween instead of something resembling sex.
TIL you can AMA
The time I had to clean out a gay friend's stash of porno and latex boyfriends, including a 24" double-donged latex boyfriend. The reason I had to do this? The friend was laid up in the hospital with Guillain-Barre syndrome, and he wanted to spare his parents (and himself) the embarrassment of the stash. Something similar had happened another time when he'd sent his father to his apartment to find something...
At the time, I was embarrassed for myself, my friend, and my friend's father...
...and, I thought of Winston Wolfe from Pulp Fiction, and how uncool my role as fixer was...
Standing at a gas pump in my youth and making a comment on an ugly bicyclist across the street without noticing her husband filling his bike tire with air in hearing range.
There's always the "how far along are you?" to a woman who gained weight. I did do that (say that). Then, seeing the shock on her face and realizing what I had just done, and knowing she had just finished her dissertation, I said, "when do you defend it?" - to which, with relief (and still some suspicion), she answered that she'd already defended it. I still count that as the best verbal save in my life.
Holy crap Batman.
A girl liked me. I liked her back. This girl invites me over. I come over to her place, she has to come down from the third floor to let me in. I know she is sick, but she says she wants company. We talk. We click. I move in for a kiss. She doesn't stop me. I'm pumped, because she is pretty. shortly after lips touch she pushes me away. I'm a bit puzzled, she seems into me. She reaches for trash can and vomits. She bounces back and forth between vomiting and laying on her bed. I know it is her being sick, but still feels like the act of kissing me made her sick to her stomach. Hard hit for the old ego. She said she felt guilty and wanted me to try to wait it out/promised to make it up to me. Eventually it reached the point she had her buddy who lived next door walk me out to lock up after me. I went home and started drinking, heavily. When she called for the rain check later that week I never answered, which is really odd for me. I almost never dodge a phone call. I admit it was unfair, but it was just too gross/odd for me. Lucky for me, I didn't catch whatever she had.
As a kid I once walked straight into a freshly-cleaned glass door (that was usually left open) in front of a large group of people. This was, as you might imagine, a touch embarrassing. But the real kicker was when my mother did the same thing an hour or so later after coming to pick me up.