Embarrassing Moments

For our company e-newsletter this month, I've decided to do a feature on Most Embarrassing Moments. It made me think about two embarrassing things that have happened to me in the last few years, and I wanted to share them - why? I don't know. Just bear with me. I know that some really embarrassing things have definitely happened to me in the past - like when someone (I will not share names) pulled my Velcro chorus skirt down in the middle of an intersection in Dothan when I was in high school. That was embarrassing. It was embarrassing when I asked someone who had a child what her husband did for work, and she told me she wasn't married. Ah, but my two main stories.

About a year and a half ago, I was getting ready for our New Principal's Meeting. I coordinate some of our meetings at my job, so the New Principal's Meeting is one of them - this meeting is where a few folks who work for RB&Co. are invited to become shareholders in the company (uh, I think that's what it is). So, I was getting ready for this meeting. Even though this is a smaller meeting (much smaller than any of our others), any kind of meeting planning is a lot of work. Having food brought in, making sure the room is unlocked, set up correctly, you know, just a lot of details. Well, the morning the meeting was beginning, I stopped at Starbucks to pick up coffees. I cannot remember what those big jug things are called - they have a cute name - but I was getting those paper-y carafe things to take to the meeting. I was picking up 4 of them. I took two of them to my car and came back to get the second load. It was rainy that morning and yuck outside. I had on khaki trousers and brown high heels. I walked back into the store, and they had a rug like this:

Not exactly like this (it was bigger and black) but a lot like this. Well, I got my heel caught in one of the holes, and I fell down. Not a graceful fall down, but a fall where you are yelling, "Oh, oh, oh, oh" the whole time because I was just hoping I could catch myself some way. I am now on the floor. Well, guess what? Not one person got up to help me. This probably serves me right because Landon and I have seen some people fall before and had no clue what to do to help them and have just stood there. This is what happened with me. Finally, after what seemed like an hour, but was probably just 10 seconds or so, I got up off the floor, and I was okay, and I really wanted to cry. I got up to the counter to get my second load of stuff - well, the employee did not even ask if I was okay! So, I said, "Excuse me, did you just see me fall down over there?" Then, she said, "Do you want cream to go with these coffees?" It was like they were afraid I would sue them, so she wouldn't even acknowledge that she had seen me fall. It was embarrassing, and even when I got in the car, I couldn't cry about it because I had to go straight to work and couldn't have crazy makeup smeared down my face. Sometimes being an adult is hard.

Landon and I have witnessed a lot of embarrassing moments for people. I think we are jinxed or something sometimes. Here are just a few things we have seen happen:
- One time we were at a wedding out of town. It was around Christmas. We happened to be parked at this church right in front of an outdoor nativity scene with plastic people. It was nighttime, and we were leaving the wedding. Landon starts the car and the headlights come on. They are shining brightly on the already lit up nativity scene. All of a sudden, here come a man going to his car. Instead of walking on the sidewalk, he tries to cut through some way between the front of our car and the nativity. Well, he fell down right in front of our car inside the nativity. It was very strange. He fell among all the plastic people.

- Another time we had been at Woodstock for Sunday night Service. After the service, I was talking with someone and facing the front of the church. All of a sudden, a man was walking by the steps at the front (a bunch of hard wood steps), and he fainted. He slammed his head down on those steps and just laid there. Landon had to go into security mode and get help, etc. We were both so freaked out and stressed after it happened that we decided to go to Cracker Barrel. We sat down at Cracker Barrel and started looking at our menus. All of a sudden, craziness breaks loose. A man fell trying to get up from his table, but he grabbed onto other tables to break his fall. The other tables slid across the floor, throwing the salt and pepper shakers, lanterns, on the floor where they busted right by/onto our legs. That was one crazy night.

- We have had to stop for 2 (I feel like 3, but I can only remember 2) motorcycle accidents and help with them. I am serious.

The other embarrassing thing I was going to share was when I sent out a company newsletter on behalf of our CEO to the entire firm and it was supposed to say "Attached is the End of the Year Firm Newsletter", and instead I wrote, "Attached is the End of the Firm Newsletter". It was a nightmare. I had only been at RB&Co. for about 4 months then, so it was TERRIBLE. Russ was GREAT about it, but it was awful. For like 2 years I could not even talk about it without crying and my face getting hot. Now, I like to tell the story to the newest employees so they can see that even if you make crazy mistakes for the CEO OF THE COMPANY....it ends up alright in the end...people have grace at my work. :)