Once when I was in junior high, I stood inside a classroom and did a (hilarious) impersonation of my history teacher. It was more sarcastic than mean, but still pretty disrespectful. It wasn’t until my friends stopped laughing that I realized that I had forgotten to close the door and that my teacher had walked up behind me. I could have laughed it off, but my natural response to social embarrassment is to apparently injure myself. I apologized and flailed about and hit myself in the nose with my history textbook. Thankfully my teacher figured that surprise nosebleeds are punishment enough and my impersonation was ignored.
You’d think my tendency to cause myself injury would have been something I grew out of eventually, but that hasn’t proven true. Like, at all. Another day, another chance for me to embarrass myself as I stopped at my friends house to take out their trash while they were on vacation. They have odd observant neighbors (doesn’t everybody?) and I was trying very hard not to look like a random person coming to steal a garbage can. In my effort to be all nonchalant, I caught my shoelace under the wheel of the can and almost fell over. I pinwheeled my arms, saved myself from a faceplant and tried to see if anyone saw anything. Of course, there across the street stood the neighbors, watching me flail about with a trash can. I could practically hear them calling the cops; “excuse me, 911, there is hoodlum trying to awkwardly steal a trash can.” Thinking that I could play this off all cool, I pushed the trash can to the end of the driveway, smiled and waved to the neighbors and smartly turned to go back to my car….only to impale myself on some sort of metal coming out of the can.
Yeah, I’m sure the neighbors were impressed with how I screeched, flailed around and tried to unhook my shirt from the trash can without hurting myself or ripping my clothes. My total inability to function surely made me look less suspicious, right?
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