The Buzz

It has come to my attention that it has been a while since I shared an embarrassing moment on my blog. And since I'm all about sharing embarrassing moments, I thought I should whip up another installment.

I grew up in Southern Michigan, in an area riddled with lakes. There were easily 10 lakes within a 30 mile radius of my home. My grandparents lived on a lake, and I learned to water ski at an early age. It makes sense that I got my very first job between my Freshman and Sophomore years of high school (at the ripe old age of 14) at a marina.

My marina job was the best job of my life. Sure, I was a peon who had to clean the showroom boats, clean the rental cottage, mow the lawn, and pump the gas into each and every boat on the lake, but 98% of my time that summer was spent outside in sandals, shorts, and a bathing suit top. And my boss was cool- he gave his employees free reign to the pop machine outside. All you had to do was grab the key and open it up. The hardest part was choosing what kind you wanted. Now that I'm an adult, I realize that was his way of insuring we all stayed as hydrated as possible in the summer heat, but at the time I was all like, "Woooooah, man! Free pop!"

I was the only female employee, outside of the owners fiancee, who was beautiful but also engaged to the owner. Dave, the owner, leaned toward hiring college boys for help because most of the work (outside of what I helped with) required strong young tanned and shirtless muscular men to help with. Looking back, that was probably just the opinion of a boy crazy 14 year old girl, but I'm glad I stayed hydrated because little 14 year old me? Yeah. I seriously spent the summer wiping drool off my chin.

The one problem with me having this job (full time for the most part) was the fact that the marina was located about 15 miles outside of the town I lived in, and it had funky hours that didn't allow my mom to take me in the one and only family car because she had a job that supported our family and all. My parents put their heads together and solved this problem by purchasing "My Thing".

"My Thing" was a purple Yamaha Jog, and I adored it. It was a joy that I had never known before, and I commuted each day on back country roads that were rarely traveled, filling my lungs with the freshest, freest air I have ever felt.

I had one of those hip half helmets with the face shield that snaps onto the front, and promised my parents to always wear it. Plus, it was the law. One bright and free summer day, I was on my way to work and decided since I had glasses on I would remove that face shield(but still wear the helmet- I was a good girl).

I was almost out of town, in a corporate area that bordered the edge. Beyond that was nothing but miles and miles of country and fresh air. Farms, corn fields, and free range dogs aplenty, but I wasn't concerned with them because I was able to go 45 mph. What I was concerned with was being able to watch college boys muscles ripple in the sun when I got to work.

Just as I passed the very last factory on the way out of town, it happened. I was happily doing my 45 mph, and WHACK! something hit me on the side of the face, in between the helmet and my cheek. And it stung quite a bit, too, like the hefty sting of a fly swatter on a bare leg. As my mind was processing what it was that could have hit me, I felt it start moving further down under the helmet.

As I felt this thing crawl on my face, I couldn't stop my thing and get my helmet off fast enough. And I couldn't, either, because as I was yelling, "No, No, No!" the damn thing, WHATEVER IT WAS, was crawling into my ear. By the time I was able to get the helmet off, it was fully inside my ear. And buzzing. Now I did not see this bug, and for all I knew it could have been a bee, or even worse, a wasp that can continue stinging and stinging and stinging when riled up.

Now the 14 year old girl in me wanted to lose it Mommy Dearest style, screaming like a banshee and flailing like a freshly caught bluegill. But some coherent part of me realized that I was on the edge of town, and there would be no one around to come to my assistance. As I tried to figure out what to do, I realized that I had just passed up the last factory on the edge of town. So slowly, I turned my thing around, my eyes as big as saucers, trying not to cry and loose my cool, and listening to the periodic buzz of the Boeing jet engine inside my ear.

I rode back to the factory, walked in through their front office door and up to the sliding glass partition that usually has someone sitting behind it. And thank the good Lord, at this time, on this day, it did. A really nice looking woman, who noticed my approach.

It was at this moment I had to do one of the most embarrassing things in my life. I watched her slide the glass open as I shook like a pager, and I looked her square in the eye and said, "Excuse me please, but I have a bug stuck in my ear."

To which she started to smirk and look around in the manner of "Who put you up to this, little girl?". I was sure she was thinking someone had to be pulling a prank on her. Either that, or I was mentally unstable and needed the assistance of the local authorities. And frankly, in my mind, the more authorities the better in case I wound up getting stung in the ear drum 19 gazillion times.

I tried to get her to see the seriousness of the situation. "I'm really not joking, there is a bug in my ear, and a big one, too."

"How big?" She asked me, probably thinking I was getting shaken up over a freeking gnat. Being an adult now, I'll give her that one, too. 14 year old girls do have a habit of being melodramatic.

"I don't know, I didn't exactly see it well, but please PLEASE help me."

She actually came through her door and walked into the little reception area to take a look. As she put her face closer to my ear, the bug let off a particularly nasty buzz.

She heard it. And she jumped back a full two feet from me as her eyes grew round and she realized I, in fact, was not a paid participant in a joke at her expense. "Ok, I'll call someone to help, hang on."

Before she could finish the sentence, the bug delivered me from my torture and crawled its self back out of my ear.

The glass window lady stood there, fully not believing what she was seeing. Some sort of bluish green beetle bug flew from my ear and around the little waiting room. I was so relieved I wanted to collapse. She let off giant exclamations of disbelief that that bug could have actually FIT in my ear canal.

I thanked her for her time, went back out to "My Thing", SNAPPED MY VISOR SHIELD BACK ONTO MY HELMET, and finished the drive to work.

I was almost 45 minutes late for work that day, and showed up with the excuse, "I'm sorry I'm late for work, but I got a bug stuck in my ear." And then of course I had to tell my story.

Those college boys I spent my summer drooling over? They filled my head with thoughts of that bug laying eggs in my ear (apparently Star Trek style) until I insisted somebody douse the whole side of my face and ear in both rubbing alcohol AND peroxide.

Oh yeah, and they spent the rest of the summer buzzing at me.

BZZZZT.

The Horror From Below

Right after Bonehead got out of the Navy, he worked for a local railroad as a breakman. Although this job paid quite well and enabled us to stay within an hour of our parents (who were neighbors for the better part of 15 years), it had its disadvantages. He was on call all the time. He had absolutely no set schedule. And there were weird rules, too. Like if he worked an 8 hour shift, he had to have at least 8 off. But they were calling him after 6 hours off (in order to give sufficient notice) and sometimes he had an hour drive to wherever they needed him to be or back home. More often than not, his 8 hours off turned into 4. It completely sucked. He missed birthdays, holidays, weekends, weekdays, and more. I rarely saw him.

One Saturday evening, my mom had driven out to spend the night at our place. The hour was late, and my mom was long ago tucked into our guest bedroom snoring away. I had stayed up late watching movies with Bonehead in order to spend some time with him. Sure enough, at about 1:30 am, Bonehead got the call that he had to go into work. In order to be there on time, he left our house at about 2am. And I foolishly stayed up; curled up on our couch, wrapped like a burrito in a blanket, watching the remainder of the movie we had been watching.

Then the lights went off and the whole place got dark. After some thought, I realized the light in the upstairs hallway was still on, which led me to believe that a fuse blew. But the fuse box was located in the basement and I couldn’t see my way out of the living room, let alone down a whole flight of stairs. So I began to feel my way to our kitchen junk drawer I knew we kept a flashlight tucked into. On the way, I began to have more thoughts.

‘Wow, the whole house is creepy when it’s pitch black in here. It’s like straight out of a horror movie, with just enough moonlight coming in through the sliding glass doors to create spooky shadows everywhere. Say, what’s the first thing that happens in stalker movies? The lights go off, and the phone lines get cut. The lights go off? You don’t say…You don’t think there’s somebody waiting in the basement to bludgeon you, do you? Oh for crying out loud you big ninny, it’s just a freaking fuse that blew. Put your big girl panties on and go flip the freaking switch you giant scaredy cat.’

And that’s exactly what I did. With the trusted flashlight in hand I made my way to the basement and began to carefully navigate my way down the basement steps. Truly, I am not known for my grace. I once tried on a pair of high heeled shoes, and immediately after my husband told me I was insane for buying them that I would break my neck in them, I fell. In the middle of my kitchen. I had been standing still.

About half way down the stairs, my flashlight lost battery power. It didn’t die, exactly, but it did one of those moves where the beam of light got so dim you could hardly see with it. I started to wait a moment for my eyes to adjust to the new level of darkness, but decided I’d better just hurry up and make my way to the fuse box and flip the switch before I lost all light completely. There were no windows in the basement, and if I lost that little battery power I did have, I would be in total darkness.

We actually lived in a townhome at the time, and the layout was such that our basement had a door that led directly into the garage. So there was the wall the fuse box was on, and about 7 feet directly behind it was the door that opened up into our garage.

More horror movie thoughts followed as I made it to the fuse box and went to open the cover. I was quite busy telling myself I was an idiot for entertaining thoughts like that. Really, though, if there was a slasher in the house, he would have jumped out from behind my refrigerator anyway, long before I ever got downstairs…..

And that’s when I heard it. A bump came from the door behind me. And as I turned the flashlight to the door, I not only heard it, but through the faintest of dim lights, I saw it as well. A loud creak began to come from the door, and IT BEGAN TO OPEN.

At that point I lost all sense of reality, so sure I was trapped in a real life horror movie, and I began screaming at the top of my lungs and ran at full throttle back towards the basement steps and began the ascent at least 4 steps at a time. The entire time I was screaming about there being someone in the house in the best first hill of a roller coaster voice I could summon.

I made it up the stairs to the first floor still screaming. I ran past the front door to the second set of steps and then flew up them 4 at a time. My mom was half way down the hallway already to see what the commotion was about. She calmed me down, and I spit out my story. The only thing I could think was that Bonehead had forgotten to close the garage door on his way out, and someone had entered our home.

My mom then told me I was over reacting and asked me why I didn’t run out the front door (that I ran past) instead of up another flight of steps with no exit to be found upstairs (And WHAT exactly am I always yelling at the blond heroine with one high heel still strapped to he foot as she’s trying to escape? Take your freaking shoe off and go out the door! That one! RIGHT THERE!)

That’s right. I ran sniveling like a baby to where? My mommy.

My mother, being the mom she is, talked some sense into me. Through my shaking I remember scaring up some sort of defense mechanism, kitchen knives most likely, lighting a candle or three, and going back down to the basement together. We flipped the switch, the lights came back on, and then with kitchen knives held high, we opened the door to the garage further. The garage door was closed. It was just a draft that had come through.

Oh. Silly me.

Mom went back to bed, and I sat up WITH EVERY LIGHT IN THE HOUSE ON until 7am. When I drifted off peacefully for a couple of hours of sleep.

Woodfield Window Shopping

I am the type of person who enjoys a good window shopping excursion. I don’t always have to spend money, and often times if I do, it is not very much. I love to look and daydream about items it would be nice to have, and daydream I do.

One evening a few years ago I was at the mall with my mom and a friend of hers. We’d been out to dinner, and the mall was just next door, so we decided a little window shopping excursion was just what we needed. We hit the mall suburban style.

I grew up in an area where the nearest mall was a minimum of 45 minutes away. A trip to the mall meant a whole day was usually planned around it, and we didn’t make that trip unless we had an absolute need to. Normally, this was right around the middle of August each year, so we could hit JC Penney’s for school clothes. Regardless, there was a need required for a trip to the mall.

Suburban style is a whole lot different. When I moved to the Northwest Suburbs at age 15, it meant that I was exactly 10 minutes from a shopper’s paradise- Woodfield Mall. This mall, in a simple explanation, is huge. And the absolutely glorious part was that I no longer had to wait until I had a desperate need for something only a mall can offer in order to traipse through one. I could make a quick trip for one thing if I wanted. Or I could just go hang out for no other reason than to pass time. That’s suburban style- hanging out at a mall for no other reason than to pass the time, or for something to do in the suburbs. After all, shopping is a sport.

This particular evening, we walked around the mall a little bit, browsing through the larger department stores, laughing and talking about girly things. And as we meandered through the other shoppers at the mall, we stopped outside a fine jewelry store to look at the jewelry on display.

I have always loved jewelry but unfortunately I have super sensitive skin. This leaves nothing but the expensive jewelry available to me, but unfortunately it’s usually not in my budget. All the same, I absolutely love to look.

I remember the display like it was yesterday, with all sorts of precious stones sparkling and shining. Opals and Rubies. Sapphires and my favorite, emeralds.

As my eyes meandered over the jewelry, I saw it. It was the most beautiful ring I had ever seen. The emerald was so green it sucked me into it. The diamonds on the sides sparkled so much they could have had their very own light source. Oh, it was so divine. I bent over for a closer look.

WHACK

My head hit the glass window of the display, and I really didn’t realize what had happened until it had bounced off and wound up a good foot and a half away from the glass. The sound of the loud whack found itself into my ears, and as I mentally assessed the situation it sunk in what I had just done. Essentially, I had just head-butted the window outside the jewelry store.

By this point, I am starting to get a little embarrassed by my obvious lack of awareness of my physical surroundings, and look to see if anyone had noticed. Maybe it wasn’t that bad- maybe no one noticed.

I looked up, inside the store, and found a dozen pairs of eyes all focused on me. And not an encouraging smile to be seen. I could have been a rare gorilla on display at the zoo. I turned a shade resembling cabernet, and tried blend back in with all the other shoppers walking through the mall.

I found my mother and her friend around the corner of the store- both laughing hysterically. My mom was actually laughing so hard her legs failed to hold her up and she was sitting on the floor.

And this is another one of my many most embarrassing moments. I truly wish I could say it never happened again…

Kleenex Boxes

My mother is the youngest of 5 children. More importantly, she is the only girl of the family. I know I have mentioned in the past that my uncles have been known to tease me. I can safely assume that once I arrived in the picture, I may have taken my mother’s place of honor. I can also assume that she probably got worse than I ever dreamed of. Something tells me, though, that it was just a matter of time before she was able to hold her own.

Back when we lived in Carbondale (and shortly before we had children), my mom drove the 6 hours to spend a few days with us. Bonehead and I used to love these visits from our mothers because it usually meant a trip to the grocery store. Free groceries to supplement a college budget are always an extremely welcomed item.

On this particular visit, my mother and I went to the local Wal-Mart to do some shopping. She had gone her own way for a few minutes leaving me to peruse the aisles at will, choosing the items I thought we could make use of. As I neared the end of an aisle, on the right hand side, I saw boxes of tissues. We needed tissues.

Now, I have noticed a pattern in all of the grocery stores I have visited in the past 15 or so years. At one point or another during my excursion there is always someone I have to wait for to make a decision. Usually, from the time they take, you’d think the decision was a matter of life or death. “Oh, oh, oh. Do I get the 2% cheese or the full fat? What would the kids actually eat? Would the hubby notice if I slipped 2% into his diet? Oh, oh, oh.”

Sometimes that decision maker is me, sometimes it is not.

On this day, it just so happened the decision maker was someone else. And usually, I am more than patient. But for some reason I can not quite explain, that day I wasn’t. As I saw her bent over the Kleenexes, I decided I could sneak up above her and grab the box I wanted real quickly. In and out, and she’d never know I was there.

Except for the fact that I dropped the box on her head. I immediately wanted to crawl into a hole and blend in with the scenery. Oh, how I wished I could have been anywhere but there- I would have preferred weeding the cracks in sidewalks with a butter knife to standing in that store at that moment. I immediately began to apologize profusely. “Oh, I am SO SORRY.”

It was that moment I noticed my mom approaching us. My own sweet , loving, grocery providing mother looked at me, looked at the lady, assessed the situation, and said, “No, she’s not. I saw her, she did it on purpose.”

I turned about 23 individual shades of red, and that’s all I remember. I think I blacked out.

And that is another one of my very many most embarrassing moments.