Now That's Embarrassing!

Don’t get me wrong. I have had many embarrassing moments in my life. But I cannot recall a time in my life when I so blatantly put my dignity on the line.

I am taking a crazy risk on Tuesday night.

I mean, the potential level of embarrassment may be worse than the time I was substitute teaching for an 8th grade science class and didn’t understand why the class kept laughing at me. (It became all too clear when that stupid giggling girl handed me a note to tell me my zipper was down.)

And the risk-return ratio is not really in my favor. In fact, I have much more to lose than gain from this potential exploitation on Tuesday night.

In fact, I may be more embarrassed than I was the day I didn’t know I had a bright red velcro curler holding my bangs in place when I checked out of an upscale Atlanta hotel and walked into a meeting with our advertising agency.

If you are not yet convinced of the magnitude of my potential embarrassment, I offer up my infamous church organ debut. I was on summer break from college when our organist moved to Seattle. The priest scraped the bottom of the barrel and somehow came out with me as a replacement. I mean, why not? I had taken organ lessons in 2nd grade.

The organ was right next to the altar, facing the congregation. I was insanely nervous that gray morning when the priest came up to announce the hymns for the mass. In fact, I was so nervous that I didn’t know he was announcing the hymns for the mass. I thought he was actually starting Mass. When he said that the entrance hymn was going to be ‘Hail Holy Something’ I started playing the song.

But nobody was singing. I played the introduction twice (praying that someone would sing along), and then continued playing the song and finished with only about 4 or 5 wrong notes. When l looked up I saw my sisters laughing so hard they had tears running down their faces. Then the priest said “The offertory song will be Take our Bread.” He looked at me in confusion and said, ‘Would you like to practice that, too?”

Seriously. Tuesday may be even more embarrassing than that.

I’m taking an Audition class at Trustus Theatre. For fun. Our final class is a mock audition where we will be reading a monologue of our choice. The artistic director of Trustus will be evaluating us. Whereas the other students will be performing professional monologues, I’ve decided to read one of my blogs: The Corsage (July 24, 2010).

And while other students may be performing scenes from a Pulitzer prize winning play about conflict in a marriage, or post-depression racial tensions in the south, I will be talking about the day I found a piece of Kevin’s poop on my shoulder.

I hope the director has a sense of humor.