I’m a pretty regular person, or in modern terms, I’m fairly “basic.” I’m a young, newly-married, college student who is still figuring out life. There have been plenty of times I have embarrassed myself. In fact, I could honestly share three embarrassing moments that happened today. I’d say I’m a positive, intelligent, clumsy, directionally challenged person, who loves, kids, baking, music, and horses. That’s all you really need to know before I let you in on my life secrets.
Lots of people get injuries during sports. That’s not embarrassing. I wish that I could say that I got injured in a cool sports game. Those injuries are something to be proud of. I, however, was a clumsy little 8th grade P.E. student doing basic soccer drills when I embarrassed myself.
Soccer Fail
The P.E. coach had lined all of us students into rows and pairs. We were doing the classic pass the soccer ball back and forth exercise. It was all going pretty smoothly. Then we worked on stopping the ball under a foot and then passing it back. I’m not athletic in any sense of the word, but I’d seen people and little kids stop the soccer ball with their feet many times. It looked and sounded easy enough. My partner kicked me the ball and I confidently went to step on it and stop it. I didn’t realize I shouldn’t really “step” on the ball. As soon as my foot was resting on the ball I realized it was still moving and I was losing my balance. Instead of lifting my foot off of the ball and regaining my balance like a normal person, I made a terrible mistake. I decided to take my foot that was still on the ground and step on the soccer ball. Seriously, I have no idea why I did that. Obviously, I quickly dead mummy fell to the floor.
A fall during P.E. is embarrassing, especially when P.E. is your least favorite class of the day like it was mine. But I got to live out the iconic movie scene where the poor clumsy kid falls and then opens his eyes to a circle of his peers staring at him. That’s right, I managed to knock myself out for a split second which gave my fellow peers a chance to form a concerned circle around me before I could hurry and sit up and pretend like I was totally fine.
Lesson Learned
My traumatic experience solidified my dislike of P.E. classes and working out in public. What sounds like a humourous story to one person felt like the worst day ever to me back in Jr. High. Thankfully, I grew from that embarrassing moment. I learned that sometimes you just have to laugh at yourself. I laugh at myself all the time now. I do some pretty clumsy and embarrassing stuff that makes for a good laugh every now and then. You can choose to dwell on your embarrassing mistakes and continue to pity or get angry at yourself. Or, you can choose to see the humor in the situation, move on, and lead a more positive life. Life is so much more enjoyable when you aren’t stressing about past mistakes or embarrassing moments. There’s no way to prevent every embarrassing moment you’ll have and I’m well aware I have lots more embarrassing moments to look forward to. But, I plan to laugh them off and grow as a person.