What was your most embarrassing moment?
Everything embarrasses me, even this question.
K lived down the street from me. Our houses each sat on the top of a hill, a small valley separating them. Whenever we were getting together to play, we would meet halfway at Oude and Chris's driveway. Meeting halfway was special to me and whenever I drive past that spot, I still feel the anticipation of seeing her walking down the hill towards me.
Her family was my family too. I grew up with them, I loved them, Her Dad was gruff like mine was, like all our dad's were. Her mom was too, but she was also warm and accepting. They were the kind of people you could be equally terrified of and excited about. Her brother and sister were similar ages to my brother and sister. It was a comfortable place to be. It was one of my homes.
K had an Uncle who looked exactly like John Travolta and I mean exactly. I love John Travolta. Always have, always will. I think that I would go so far as to classify him as my first love. The first time that I met her uncle, we were camping out at Beaver Mouth,which was pretty much the only destination past where we lived. We were climbing the gigantic boulder, when K's uncle put his hand out to help me up and I looked up at him and saw John Travolta smiling down at me with the sun shining majestically behind him. I can still clearly remember the feeling that my little girl heart had at that exact moment. It was a mix of awe, butterflies and sheer humiliation.
Every year, you could count on K's family throwing their annual Pig Roast. It was a huge party and everyone they knew would show up, planning to stay the night. There was always a fire burning until late and everyone would gather around it drinking, smoking and telling stories. The music was always loud and my parents said they could hear it from their house. I didn't believe them until the one year that I wasn't allowed to go and I could, in fact, hear the music floating over the little valley. It was an absolute great time.
One year stands out in particular, I must have been about ten years old. I think that this may have also been the year that K's mom let me drive their station wagon around the yard. Inevitably, I hit something and burst the front passenger side tire. I felt awful, but she told me that it was her fault for letting a kid drive her car. She was good like that.
Other than crashing the car, I was having a great time at the party when I had to use the bathroom. Like most people who lived in the middle of nowhere, including me, K's family had an outhouse in the yard for times like this. So, into the outhouse I went and just as I started to pee in the dark, John Travolta opens the door to the outhouse (light shining behind him) and reveals little ten year old me sitting in there. He said, "Whoops, sorry," and shut the door. I was completely mortified. I remember locking the door, which I had obviously forgotten to do in the first place and sitting in there, in the dark, feeling like I could never show my face again. I would have to stay there forever, steeping in my own shame. After multiple people had tried the door and found it locked, I knew that I would eventually have to skulk out and join the party.
That was probably, the single most embarrassing thing that has ever happened to me and I seriously consider myself traumatized by it. To this day, about twenty two years later, every time I sit down on a toilet, I am overcome with fear that I forgot to lock the door. There are times when I stop, sometimes mid stream, and do the pants down shuffle to to the door to double check that it's locked (it always is).
I am sure that K's uncle Brian never thought anything of it at the time and I'm sure that he never thought about it again, but I am positive that I will never recover from the time that John Travolta saw me on the toilet.
