Awkward!

It’s been a while since something mortifying happened to me, so I should have known that I was due.

I’ve suffered through a long litany of embarrassing moments in my life, some of which have been chronicled on this blog – for example, when:

I demanded that a stranger fix my window (https://mondaymorningrail.com/2016/06/20/broken-windows-and-empty-hallways/), I stood naked in my doorway fearing a fake earthquake (https://mondaymorningrail.com/2016/08/15/shakin-all-over/), my bathing suit slipped off at a waterpark (https://mondaymorningrail.com/2017/07/10/oops/), and I had to visit a repair shop with an X-rated videotape stuck in my VCR (https://mondaymorningrail.com/2019/07/28/devil-with-the-blue-dress/).

Believe me, those are mere flecks of paint in my immense masterpiece of embarrassing moments.

But onward I teeter through life, continuing to add to the gallery.

A few days ago, I was preparing to ice my lower lower back – part of my routine after exercising because I have sciatica, SI joint syndrome, facet syndrome, and/or any of a number of lower lower back issues that no doctor has been able to definitively diagnose. It’s a relatively minor scourge, but I do feel some pain when I exercise, so I ice afterwards even though it likely doesn’t provide one iota of help.

While I’m icing, I listen to music through gigantic over-the-ear headphones. That day I was listening to the Psychedelic Furs.

(I’ve been going through my CD collection alphabetically and ripping my favorite “primo” tunes to my computer and iPhone, employing a complex method of rating and analysis that would bore you to tears. Obviously I am up to the “P”s. I know, I know, I could just drag myself into this millennium and use Spotify or some other streaming service, but I want to curate my own collections, thank you very much.)

So this is the routine: I don the headphones, crank up the music, stand by the side of the bed, pull my sweatpants down to my knees, hold the ice pack on my lower lower back, lean forward, and slowly fall facedown onto the bed.

This is undoubtedly an impractical regimen. For instance, I could lie down and then grab the ice pack to place it on my back.

But whatever works.

In this particular instance, I had gone through the routine and was just about to fall forward onto the bed.

(I’ve reenacted the fateful moment in the photo below.)

But then, in between the seductive post-punk marimba notes of the Psychedelic Furs’ “Love My Way” (a 5-star primo song if ever there was one), I thought I may have heard something. So I looked to my left.

Our housepainter was standing in the doorway.

He’d been working on the rear of our house, but he’d come up the back stairs with a question. I guess I hadn’t heard him knock, what with my tunes cranked up louder than a Liberace suit.

So he decided to just let himself inside, and that door is, oh, about 2-1/2 feet from my bedroom door, and it looks directly in.

So there I was, pants down, bent forward over the bed, wearing huge headphones, seemingly clutching my backside, and grooving to something he couldn’t hear.

Did he think I was engaged in some kind of weird solo sex game?

I can’t even imagine what he must have been thinking, and I’ll never know because I can never look him in the face again. But he backed slowly down the stairs while cupping his hand over his eyes as if he were looking into the sun.

Maybe it was the glare off of my white butt.

Due to popular demand, I am including, at the end of each blog post, the latest random diary entries that I’ve been posting on Facebook for “Throwback Thursday.” These are all taken absolutely verbatim from the lengthy diaries I kept between 1970 and 1987.

January 21, 1975 [age 19]:

“I love working with Mr. Nash [as a high school teacher’s aide], who gives hilarious lectures. About half of the time I’m busy setting up or helping with labs. The only thing is, Mr. Nash gives very nebulous directions and it’s really a challenge just to be able to do what he wants done. Many a time I’ve screwed up. Last week he sent me to the supply room for a pressure cooker, and with my acute knowledge of practical things, I had no idea what a pressure cooker was. So I rummaged around in the supply room for an interminable time pretending I knew what I was looking for until I realized that I was getting nowhere. Finally I started dragging random things out and holding them up so Mr. Nash could see me through the window and nod his head when I finally held up an actual pressure cooker!”

RIP, Donald N. Nash, 1947-2015

January 27, 1975 [age 19]:

“After all my classes [as a high school teacher’s aide] are over, I have about half an hour to wait before I am allowed to go home. Sometimes I play chess with Alan [a math teacher], but usually I sit around and talk. Julie Miyahara [a remedial English teacher] comes in from next door and we often talk about education. I have found that the best teachers are the ones who doubt themselves the most, who CARE enough to wonder if they really ARE good. Time and again Julie walks wearily in, frustrated, saying, ‘Oh, Paula, are we really teaching them anything at all?’ I get worried when people turn to me and I don’t know what to say, so I pretend I know what I’m talking about and I discourse on the evils of sight reading and the similar ‘innovative’ educational practices that emerged during the experimental age of the 60s. And I do it all with my usual pained expression.”

February 2, 1975 [age 19]:

“I’m sitting here thinking about the future and right now I have some tentative plans which will undoubtedly dissolve away. I’ve been accepted back into San Jose State for next semester, and I believe that I’ll continue with my current major [law enforcement]. I really don’t know what I want to do and it’s a terrible feeling. I’ve always ‘known’ I’d do police work but now I have these disturbing doubts, and I’m groping while everyone else seems to have found their way. I’ve regressed. All I can hear are Bobby Dylan’s words, ‘Ah, but I was so much older then, I’m younger than that now.’ Next semester I will NOT be at home, but whether in the dorms or in an apartment I don’t know. It will probably be a disaster, but maybe I can learn how to be social. Then two years of school, then a year’s or a summer’s travel, then I’ll live in San Francisco. I will get a job near the Wharf or North Beach or Chinatown, preferably in a bookstore, with long-haired intellectuals in an old building with a basement and ancient rickety stairs.”

February 6, 1975 [age 19]:

“The Chevron/Standard company sent me no credit card today but a rejection slip saying that they didn’t have sufficient information to guarantee my good credit. And I have two jobs! I think Dad is going to write a letter to them or something, but anyway, I’m tired of all the hassles on my shoulders, and the world bugs me.”