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Contest

You know what I think is really useless? Blogging that you haven't blogged for a while and then apologizing. But you know what I think is cute? Posting a picture that captures that same sentiment.

Manzanita June 18, 2010
Contrite dog is contrite*

But how'z about I make it up to at least two of you out there.

Picture%201.png
Successful Lace Knitting


A little while ago, I posted about Donna Druchunas' new book, Successful Lace Knitting, to which I contributed the cover project. Well I recently received my copy and one extra copy, both of which are signed by the author. That means I have one more copy than I rightfully need.

To enter for a chance to win, leave a comment below answering the following question.

What is the most embarrassing thing your parents/guardians ever did in front of your friends?

Here's my answer:
My biological father used to crochet his own banana hammocks and wear them in public to swim at the local country club. I'm from a small town, and people I grew up with still talk about it. It's memories like that, that make me all the more thankful for the upgrade I got a few years back. (Speaking of which, a very happy father's day, dad2.0!)

Here are the logistics of the drawing. Get your comment in by the end of day Friday June, 25, and I will pick one comment at random to receive the signed copy of Successful Lace Knitting. I will also award one gift certificate for a Twist Collective pattern (you will be able to pick from any that they offer) to the person who makes me laugh and/or cringe the hardest with their comment.





*Note, no dogs were actually made to feel contrite to produce this blog post.

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Comments (61)

Rebecca:

Ah Marnie,

My dad too relived his glory days on the hs swim team by stuffing himself in speedos & liked to wander around the beach after the swim wearing them & his polo shirt that hung at just the right amount to showcase everything. I could see all the local teens giggling & pointing & swerving out of the way to avoid the scary man. Yikes!

However to give you something else, he also had a big thing for Elvis. He often enjoyed crooning his songs, but he loved to tenderly sing "my darling, you hold the key" to me all sorts of places. I would always be deeply embarrassed, though on reflection, it seems so mild mannered now. Heck, poor dad has dementia & he behaves so much worse nowadays, but I don't even blink an eye anymore!

Meredith C.:

Marnie, your story really made me cringe. Just the crocheting or the hammock would have been bad enough for a kid, but to combine them and then take it all public? You poor child.
My story is another about fun in the sun. When I was a kid we had a pool in the backyard. In the summer, my friends would come over to swim, and my mom would sit in a lounge chair smoking cigs and drinking ice t. She was a woman well endowed in the breast dept, and I kept thinking that eventually I'd get big boobs too, but I never did and that's another story anyway. She would wear those terry cloth rompers, held up only by boobage, while she was lounging. So my friends and I, all about 11 and very self conscious, were swimming and goofing off, and my mom fell asleep in the sun. With her boobs out. She had thrown up her arms to shield her eyes and her top slipped out. Her boobs were fried with sunburn. It was awful. I think hers were the biggest boobs my friends had seen, as there moms were more average sized, and they were embarrassed, and left as quickly as possible. Stories were told about my mom's enormous lobster-red boobs. Still not as bad as the banana hammocks though!

I just wanted to say that there are some GREAT stories here. Great idea!

So many embarrassing moments to sift through, but one that stands out is from the year of my first serious summer crush. I was 15 and had known this boy for about 3 years (our families stayed at the same place in the summer).

Every evening there'd be a huge bonfire and everyone would sit around toasting marshmallows and telling silly stories. At the end of the evening the owners of the place would always choose a couple to walk up the road and close the main gate for the night.

Well, this night they singled out "the boy" and me to go. Much laughter ensued as we got up all blushing and awkward to do the half hour return trip to close the gate. Suddenly MY MOTHER leaps up and says, "I need to stretch my legs, so I think I'll go too!"

Dumbfounded, I stared at her and then at my Dad, who told her he'd take her for a walk to the lake. But she wasn't having any of that, she walked between the boy and I all the way to the gate and back. I don't think he and I said a word to each other in that 30 minutes, but my Mother never stopped talking.

The next night my Dad excused them both for the evening prior to the gate closing ritual, but for me the magic was lost. Such teen angst!

I addressed this in a blog awhile back, but my dad's dancing. it's ridiculous. He has rhythm, but he channels it to ridiculous dancing instead of something graceful. I saw someone on tv dancing like my dad and even though it wasn't my dad the resemblance was so perfect I was embarrassed recalling similar situations from my childhood.

Lottie:

Well - my Dad is notorious for his British sense of style and evey summer wears his shorts and open toe sandles with a pair of white socks pulled up as high as possible.

At 15 I thought this was just about the worst thing imanginable. So when I started private school and was invited to this amazing party where the whole year were going I begged him not to embarass ne when he came to pick me up.

So he walked into this boys back garden WITH HIS SOCKS STICKING ONE OUT OF EACH POCKET. I was horrified.

Since then it has become a kind of family joke for my Dad to wave socks at me at various important moments i.e graduation ' leaving home.

Oh dear.

julietn:

My parents are wonderful, and my mom is a bit of a free spirit and says almost anything that pops into her head, which I now love. Not so much when I was younger, though. The first moment that comes to mind of her embarassing me was when she dropped me off at college for the first time. There were some sophomores and juniors hanging around as everyone was unpacking, and my mom took one look at this one guy, marched up to him (she's about 5' 1", this guy was easily 6'), poked him in the chest and snapped up at him "You stay away from my daughter! I know what you're doing here!" I was just about ready to drop out of college right then. The best part is, though, that she was right--the guy turned out to be notorious for going after younger girls. Her methods may have been objectionable, but she's a good judge of character!

Mary:

I had to verify there was no particular age range listed...though most people are telling stories from childhood. My older brother and I learned preeeetty early on that it was best never ever ever to invite our friends over as my dad loses his censoring ability the later the day gets, and the more beer in his system.

However, at my wedding reception? (Small, held at my parents' house...40-ish people? You know, my absolute closest friends and faimly?) I must have forgotten about that whole NEVER EVER bit...

My father knew he'd be asked to toast us, it wasn't a surprise...except he drank so heavily (we had home brew and honey mead...I blame myself, really) that his toast made about as much sense as reading the 10th word on page 22 of every book you own...and may have lasted as long. And we all just stood there smiling with our glasses at the toasting-ready.

I became the cautionary tale for everyone's social functions thereafter.

Samantha :

When I was a kid my mother took belly dancing lessons. Now, I would go with her to the local community center where they taught these classes. I would just wait there patiently for the dumb class to be over and play with any other kids that were bored and stuck waiting for their moms too. I never really thought anything good or bad about the belly dancing classes until one night when my mom and dad had some friends over to the house for dinner. I was mortified when after dinner, my mom came out into the living room in her full on belly dancing costume. Mind you, this class had the students design and create their own belly dancing costumes and I never thought anything of it at the time. My mom had the fake coins attached to her bra, the veil, the finger symbols and the I Dream of Jeanie pants! The whole ensemble!!! She turned on the record player, (yes . . . I am that old), put on her Turkish belly dancing music and proceeded to embarrass the hell out of me and my little brother while she danced seductively for our dinner guests. I couldn't have ran out of the living room any faster than I did!!! I was mortified beyond belief!!! Definitely a night I will never forget. Unfortunately.

Lois:

I had many embarrassing moments with my Stepfather, but his old 'pull the finger' & then farting is the one that I hated the most because he did it so often!

When I was 15 y.o. I was enthralled with Margaret Mead. I remember my father and I were having a detailed conversation about one of her books. My girlfriend was not paying any attention to our conversation, until my father asked her," Well, what do you think about that?" She looked at him puzzled, and he said, "Do you think the sexual habits of the Fiji islanders are true, or do you think she was making all this stuff up?" My friend was so embarassed and did not have any answer to that. He continued talking about this, and we escaped to my bedroom. My girlfriend was so appalled that I talked about sex with my parents, and what was that all about anyway? That was in 1963, and no one, and I mean no one, talked about sex with his parent(s).

Tamara:

that would be in the form of a toast given at my wedding about an ex-boyfriend. It went something like, "remember so-and-so? here's a list of why he was a big loser. we like you better, groom." I wish I could recite it word for word but during said event the room seemed to get a bit dark and fuzzy around the edges and tinnitus set in.

Natalya:

My dad used to wear slacks with shirts tucked in. A shirt would get bunched up every once in a while, and, nevermind how public a place was, he'd undo his belt buckle, drop his trousers down to his knees, straighten his shirttails, and pull his pants back on! He did it at bus stops, he did it in grocery stores...really, looking back, his complete disregard for public and its opinion seems almost admirable... if only it weren't so mortifying!

Okay, I post this only because of Marnie's peer-pressure on "the Twitter" :-)

Two instances came to mind when I read this post. The first happened when I was in 8th grade. My family was at the local mall for some reason and my parents decided we should grab a bite to eat a the pub attached to the mall. Fine, no problem, they had great food. We sit down at a table, and this girl I'd been sweet on (she knew it too) walks in with her mom and sister and sits down at the table next to us. Dad then sees it's karaoke night and gets up to sing "Secret Agent Man". It's funny now that I look back, but at the time I couldn't get under that table fast enough to hide.

Instance number 2. My sophomore year of High School, our school band was picked to perform in the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade in Philly. As we're pulling into the school parking lot after the 25 hour bus ride back to Iowa, someone yells "isn't that Barrett's dad with his shirt off?" Without looking, I knew my dad was the "superfan" with his shirt off, waving it above his head in 20 degree weather to welcome me and the rest of the band home.

The sad part is, I'm now doing this kind of stuff to my sons, and thus the circle is complete. I am my father.

Vanessa:

Ok, I have one for each parent...my freshman year in high school my mom volunteered to be a parent escort for a hiking trip to Acadia National Park. She was kind enough to drive us up (us includes my, my boyfriend, and a couple of friends). As we were filling up the gas tank on our way out, my mom forgot to take the pump out and drove off with the pump still in the tank. She was too embarrassed to stop the car.

If that's not bad enough, my dad used to take me to the bookstore as an adolescent and fart as loudly as he could because he knew it completely horrified me. He would actually wait until I was in the same aisle to let one rip. Oh my.

Jewels:

Embarrassed and horrified when my mom had to tell all her friends about my first 'period'. I'm only 50 but back then it was one of those "secret" things not talked about.

Thank your for this little contest. I love the jacket on the cover. I also enjoyed reading the embarrassing moments other readers listed here. My parents were pretty cool and went along with any fashion and styles, which is pretty funny now when looking at old pictures. The only time my mom embarrassed me was at our local pool club. The ladies had a few drinks in the afternoon and I guess it was a dare, so after one 'black russian' too many, my mom climbed the 10ft diving board and jumped holding her nose and her flower embellished bathing cap while the other ladies cheered her on. At 9 I was mortified.
On the other hand, I think we have embarrassed our own kids many more times.

June:

My entry doesn't quite count, but here goes -

My immigrant mom, after so many years in this country, now speaks a kind of Japanese-English hybrid language by default. Once, she was pointedly critical of someone (and that someone was RIGHT THERE), and all the key words were in ENGLISH! Yikes!

My dad at a drive thru once ordered "a large fly" (instead of large fries), and I had a pretty good laugh at his expense.

But mostly, my parents didn't try to embarrass me, or I've forgotten most of it.

Linda:

These are all so funny!

My most embarassing moment was in junior high after one of my basketball games. Parked right in front of the exit (and in plain sight of my junior-high classmates) was my dad in our uber-embarassing early-eighties-style wood-panelled station wagon (with orange interior). It was bad enough that I had to be seen getting into that monstrosity, but what made it worse was when my dad got out and called me over, wearing his brand new super short running shorts. And no shirt.

The best part? I now own a station wagon (although I refer to it as "swagger wagon").

My mother used to sing along with the music during the closing credits at the movies. I'm sure no one else remembers this, but I was always mortified.

Also: There used to be this guy who would walk his dog in our neighborhood and not clean up the dog's poop. It was driving my mom crazy. One day--while my friends were over--the guy came by and his dog pooped on our lawn. My mom was watching him from the window. When he walked away without making any attempt to clean up the mess, my mom ran out of the house yelling after him, "Excuse me, sir, you forgot your excrement!"

(Perhaps she has the last laugh, though, because I would totally do the same thing now...)

Rebecca:

My mom was famous for looking over people's fences and I was famous for eyerolling and "Aw mom-ing..." Guess I got off easily, huh?...that's what mom would say anyway... thanks for the contest...love the sweater, also! Cheers...

MaryjoO:

this is almost sad -- my father died young and my mother did all sorts of "oh, grandma" type things around grandchildren but I can't remember being embarrassed by either parent LOL My mother did clean a lot though, so I was sort of surprised when I would go to other kids' homes and there was normal "disarray".

Hard to think of something in particular, but my 13th birthday cake read: Happy Birthday awful rotten teenager. My Dad thought it was cute.

Jamie:

Many years ago when we were teenagers, my brother, Mike, invited a large number of his friends over to our house for his birthday. He and some buddies were hanging out at the kitchen table chatting with my parents. Somehow, the conversation of marriage came up, and my brother asked how long they had been married. "Fifteen years," said my father proudly. After a moment my brother's brow furrowed and he began counting on his fingers. "Heyyyy," he said, a confused look on his face. My dad was just joking, but the laugh was on Mike. It was his sixteenth birthday.

At age 14, I went to a very formal dinner/dance for teens age 14 to 18. My dad decided to be a chaperone. There were dozens of small round tables around the room, with nervous teens dressed in their fancy clothes. At my table, in the center of the room, my father was flicking pats of butter at the ceiling to see if he could get them to stick.

I know I had been embarrassed in my youth by my parents, I just can't seem to recall any particular incident that stood out...or maybe I'm thick-skinned about these things? I am first-generation American, and the things they wore, did & said became much less problematic over the years since gaining an understanding of how difficult it must have been to pick themselves up & move to the other side of the world to start over. They made it look easy, but I'm not sure I could have done it.

Thanks for the cool contest!

I may have blanked out the really embarrassing stuff, but I remember standing in the front hallway getting a lecture from my mother with my friend present. Maybe this was the time my mom had decided that since we weren't busy perhaps we could wash the walls in the upstairs hallway.

Then my mother had this intuition that I'd made a face behind her back. I had not (although it probably wouldn't have been out of character). She then gave me quite an involved lecture on the whole situation and we just had to stand there and take it.

Perhaps I was 10. I'll bet my friend still remembers it. Awkward!

Backstory: my dad absolutely refuses to buy new cars. This wouldn't be so bad if he didn't insist on buying 'used' cars that are actually frankenstein-esque amalgamations of several cars smuished together under one hood. "Great deals" at $500-$1000, since he could "always fix them up!"

First day of high school, new girl in a new town that is so small everyone in my class had known each other since kindergarten. My dad rolls in an hour after school let out to pick me up; I'd spent the last hour reding/trying to look nonchalant/passably cool to the group of five very cute high school boys who were the only kids left on campus. So dad finally rolls up in his current junker, and I get in. We get going, and the car chooses that moment to shudder, cough, and die with a horrible wheeze right. in. front. of. the. boys.

"Dang, not again! Christy, the dang starter's been out! If we can get it going fast enough, I can get it started again off the momentum. Why don't you ask those boys over there to help you give me a push?"

So I had to ask. The boys were nice enough about it, they got us going and I didn't actually hear them laugh until I had to jog after the car, toss my backpack in, and leap into the open passenger side while it was still moving. Because once it got started, dad couldn't risk stopping again and having it die.

Laura:

It would have to be the time my Mom loudly exclaimed at the public pool that I really needed to start shaving my armpits. As she said "It's a jungle in there!".

Boy, I was lucky! I can't remember ever totally being mortified by my parents. So either it never happened, or I've managed to completely block it from my mind. :-)

Lisa S:

The funniest story I can tell about my mother was from a family vacation we took in 1974. We were staying in a cottage on a lake, and somehow came up with a plan to learn to waterski for the first time.

She was seated on the end of the dock, tow rope in her hands, skis in the water and pointed up. She gave the signal to take off, which the boat did, followed shortly by her...but the skis never moved. She tried four or five times with the same result! By the end, we were all laughing so hard that we were rolling on the ground.

She finally gave up, but not until after everyone in the area was watching to see if she'd go splat yet again. It still makes me chuckle 36 summers later.

We were camping in our motorhome at a family reunion and my step-dad asked me in front of my cousins if I'd flushed a tampon down and plugged the toilet...

nestra:

I think I embarassed my parents far more than they did me.

Sunnyknitter:

We were at Disneyland and it was pouring. We all bought plastic rain coats and my mum, my brother and I all had hoods on our coats. My dad used the plastic pouch his coat came in as his hat. It looked like an envelope and he used the closing flap as a brim. I think the entire park laughed at him that day, some even took pictures! Oh, well, at least we were out of town!

My parents were pretty cool when growing up but my mom thought she could do my hair just as good as the ladies in the salon. Of course she'd wait until I had a couple friends over to give me a Rave perm that resulted in curls so tight Little Orphan Annie was jealous. So there I was, mortified in front of my girl friends trying to use a fine comb to get rid of that perm. It was a long couple months for that to grow out . . .

Rebecca:

Well I can't just remember one specific memory of embarrassment. My parents are both teachers so I couldn't get away from the life long embarrassing moments. But I guess if I had to choose, it would be in 10th grade when I had my father as my Biology teacher. The constant lame jokes and the money that the kids in the class wanted to pay me to keep a test from happening made for a very interesting year all together.

Jenni:

I went to a stitching show with my mom and in one booth my mom started talking very loudly about the design and how stupid it was and who in their right mind would stitch it. Then she started to talk to the lady in the booth. I wanted to die on the spot when it turned out that the lady was the designer! I don't think my mom realized or even cared that she had just said rude things about the design in front of the designer!

So nice of you, Marnie, and such fun to read these stories! My dad loved to tell everyone - including new boyfriends as I got older - about a mole that I have on my backside. Personally, I never understood the fascination, but no matter the current conversation, he would manage to turn it around so it seemed a natural topic to bring up.

My oldest friends still remember where my mole is.

So was this prompted by an embarrassing parent-moment of your own?

Ohh, crikey. I was going to say it was the fact that my Mum dressed me in the whole street's hand-me-downs for my entire childhood - and given that the clothes were from the mid-to-late seventies, and my childhood spanned the whole of the 80's, that was quite a bad fashion clash. And no, I had no school uniform at that time.

Then I remembered my Dad. The time he poked a hole in the end of black trash bag to wear because he had no rain coat, and ran through the holiday park with his head sticking out (but not his arms), looking like a giant, bedraggled condom-mascot. The time he 'celebrated' a little too hard after a sports win, and his motorbike took off without him at a junction, leaving him sitting on the ground. The time he drank too much, and peed on an electric fence. The trouble is that the stories stay, even if I wasn't there to witness the incident...

My dad was janitor during my high school years, guess in which high school. There's many anecdotes, way too many, but my favorite that time when we went on a school trip and my dad took aside to each and everione of the boys, teachers included, and pointing at me from a never too long distance, remind them that I was his daughter, and that he will make sure of getting their balls remouved if they dare to aproach me.
Eventually a boy aproached me and became my boyfriend, and my dad gave him a piece of his mind too, but he didn't speak any Spanish, and besides, it didn't stoped him. That was nearly 18 years ago :)

Since I can think until now my father loves to wear these very short jeans-shorts with leather-sandals and socks.
This is the most embarrassing thing my father did and still does. I believe that there were more embarrassing things my parents did, but I can't remember at the moment. There must be a reason, why I can't remember.

I have had such a fabulous belly laugh reading through all these stories!

After these hilarious scenes, my mother's penchant for interpretive dance and my father's delight on saying embarrassing things no longer seem so remarkable. So I think I'll keep that dirty laundry (mostly) in the closet and just enjoy everyone else's stories, ha ha!

Congratulations on the cover pattern, by the way.

Kathy Sue:


How generous of you!! Unfortunately, the only embarrassing thing I can think of happened in front of strangers. We camped a lot in the hot Southwest, and when we were hiking, Mom would take her shirt off as soon as the number of footprints on the trail petered out, but someone as hardy as my fam always came whipping around a curve and caught her in her bra. Ooo, I thought of one--the same darling Mom used to dance around and sing preschool songs, didn't care who was visiting!!

Sandi Rosner:

My father was the police captain in the small town where I grew up. After I turned 16 and was driving, the one and only time I was late making curfew, he called the police station and had the officers on duty look for my car. The first one that saw me stopped me and told me "Your father says you were supposed to be home at 11". The friends in the car with me at the time, who forever after teased me about having a whole police force of babysitters.

My dad was County Sheriff in the small town/county where I grew up. As such, opportunities for embarrassment were many. He was pretty good about not doing that, tho.

But one time when the "rooter's bus" returned from a football game in a nearby town, all the kids were lined up at the one and only phone booth at school to call parents to come pick them up. When My turn came, dad answered the phone.

"Joe's Beanery!" he merrily chimed, "What can I get ya?"
"Dad, just cut it out and come pick me up."
"Don't know who this 'dad' fella is. We got baked beans, lima beans, navy beans, pinto beans," and he kept going! "Which beans ya want, lady?"
Kids behind me were getting impatient and telling me to hurry up.
"Dad! Just come get me at the school!"
"Lady, I'm tellin' ya, this is Joe's Beanery! We got. . ." and he proceeded to list even MORE beans.

Kids were now banging on the walls of the phone booth. I was mortified. Finally I just said, "Come get me at the school, PLEASE?!" and hung up.

Since we were always under strict orders not to play jokes like that on the phone because someone might be calling about police work, I never knew how he could tell it was me calling. After all, there was no caller ID, no separate ring tone, heck we just barely had rotary phones and only one line in the house.

I survived the humiliation, though, and got back at him later by answering the phone, "Abby's Mortuary! You stab 'em, we slab 'em! Some go to heaven some go to. . . hello?"

Oh, yeah, he was County Coroner, too!

Rachel:

Like several commenters above, I had pretty awesome parents who never really embarrassed me in front of my friends. They were actually really cool! But if I may, I'll share a story of one of my friend's parents that I was a party to.

We were about 12 and in Gatlinburg, TN for a cheer competition (my one and only summer cheerleading - even at 12, I learned fairly quickly that jumping around in short skirts in 95 degree weather cheering for boys was NOT for me). There was a large group of us - probably about eight girls and my friend's mom, who was our chaperone. We were walking back to the hotel from dinner when a car full of men drove by and honked and hooted at us. Disgusting, yes (we were 12) - dangerous, probably not. But that did not seem to be the case to my friend's mom, who promptly lost her sh*t and made us RUN back to the hotel at full speed - screaming, "RUN! RUN!" all the while - so the men would not drive back, catch us, kidnap all nine of us and force us into their car where we would undoubtedly be forced to drink Mountain Dew, eat FunYuns, and chew tobacco before they axe murdered us all.

Yeah, that was fun.

When we were in our very early teens, my sister's friend was over for dinner and somehow the conversation swung to things you could do just because you were a grownup. At the same time, we were passing around dessert for the evening, some kind of little debbie type snack in plastic wrappers. Out of nowhere, my dad's hand shot up and he slammed his fist into the visiting friend's dessert--and claimed it was something he could do because he was a grownup. Startled the heck out of everyone. He did swap his unmashed dessert for her though.

I am also one that doesn't have parents that embarrassed me in any memorable ways. I would have to say that it is because I have two very awesome parents and I do not embarrass easily.

Kate:

I love this contest!

Hmm....most embarrassing...so much to choose from...

I'd say the time my mom made me wear a dress that I *swear* looked like a piece of upholstery fabric, and I was 11 years old, and it had a lace collar and cuffs and was full-length and I looked UTTERLY RIDICULOUS and I had to wear it in front of all my cousins (to my grandparents' 50th anniversary celebration) and all my dad's childhood friends and the whole thing was mortifying. Utterly miserable.

knitmomma:

Wow, I would love to win this, but although I am certain I was embarrassed by my parents as a teen, (I was in puberty, after all, and therefor MUST be embarrassed by parents!) I cannot remember any instance!

I am lucky enough to have amazing, wonderful parents who tried very hard to not embarrass their kids.

pam:

dad speedo stories seem to be pretty much the norm. But for me, well my dad liked to walk about the house/clean/garden in tighty whites in the hot hot summer when everyone was out of school.

Yikes!

I had just turned 21 and my Dad and stepmom decided that it was high time I went to my first bar/pub. It's a really small town, three block away from my parents home. So, it's embarrassing enough to be taken to a bar by your parents, but I had to endure the two of them dirty dancing on the floor, while I watched, horrified. :-)

Lisa E (rav = danea, twitter = ljellis):

Oh dear, there are so many. I guess the one that comes to mind -- and truly expresses my dad's sense of humor -- was in high school. I'd invited a bunch of friends over to watch My Girl, and sent my father out to Blockbuster to pick up the movie. Sadly, all copies were already checked out, so instead he brought back the his logical second choice: Attack of the Killer Tomatoes.

I don't know if you've ever seen the latter, but watching it when you're expecting the former is much like taking a big swig of vodka and discovering it's Sprite. I was utterly mortified, and he was expecting me to be thrilled.

(NOW, I find Attack hilariously bad...or awfully hilarious, take your pick. But in HS, it was the worst thing I could imagine making my friends watch.)

Tia:

As much as I'd love to win this book, for the life of me cannot think of a single moment where my parents have socially humiliated me. All through my formative and embarrassable years, I was one of the very fortunate kids who not only thought her parents were kinda cool, but whose friends did as well. Yeah, my parents have their daggy moments, but if you can't sit back and laugh along with them aren't you taking yourself a little too seriously? That's my take, anyway :D

I was in the second or third grade (mid-late 1950s), and a traveling Passion Play came to my small southern town. The troupe would pick children from each town to play the little Hebrew children on stage. How fitting for me, since I was a)chosen and b) one of only three Jewish children in the town.

We were supposed to run around barefoot, as was the style back in biblical times, and I, fast becoming a method actress, was so happy to be able to do that -

My Mom, right before the first performance, came rushing up backstage with a shoe box, insisting that I wear the contents because I shouldn't get splinters in my bare feet from the wooden floor, god forbid!

I refused, threw a minor tantrum, but Mom won - and there I was, a small Hebrew child, wearing black patent leather mary janes in the middle of all of Jesus' problems.

To this day it fills me with embarrassment!

KatieB:

Oh, there are many embarrassing moments, but one that was pivotal was the time my mother took off her top and volunteered to be the dunkee and the Dunking booth at the local volunteer fireman fundraiser! I was a freshman in college. Someone alerted me, I raced over and demanded she "get down from there right now!" She calmly informed me that she wasn't showing anything anyone hadn't seen before and if I thought she should get down, maybe I should purchase balls and see if I could arrange it - and besides, it was for a good cause! She was a funny, pragmatic, generous, wise woman and I miss her every day.

Meaghan:

When I was a baby, my family went to a house warming party for my uncle. My dad liked to streak as a younger man, and he decided that he would do an inaugural streak to break in his brother's house. What dad didn't know was that there had been landscaping done overnight, with trees being planted around the front of the house. So, my dad picks me up to use as a cover-up, puts a paper bag on his head, and runs around the house, smack into one of the trees. Knocks himself out, drops me, all hell breaks loose. Good thing I don't remember it!

When I was 17 I had a major crush on a classmate. He drove me home on evening and while he was talking with my dad, my brother and my dad were having a 'fart contest' to see who could drive who out of the room. :-(

Stephanie:

It was the end of 7th grade, and I had started going out with my first boyfriend two weeks earlier. He walked me home after school, and kissed me for the first time when we were standing on the corner of my block. It was my first real kiss, and I was very much wrapped up in it when I heard giggling. My little sister was peering out from behind my parents with their mouths agape, just before my mom yelled, "Stephanie, remove your tongue from his mouth and get back in this house!" This is still legendary among my friends.

when we lived in miami, my dad had a special beach tshirt that said "i am her father".
black socks and sandals to complete the outfit.

that is it, other than occassional torment he has always been wicked awesome.

kat:

Freshman year of HS, 'Animal House' was the hit movie. My reward for successfully surviving the Jesuit drill sergeant approach to Algebra homework was sitting between my parents during a showing of Animal House at the local theater. I was mortified when Belushi hopped across the screen on the ladder.

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This page contains a single entry from the blog posted on June 20, 2010 1:11 PM.

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