#3

The third story that has been nominated for "Most Embarrassing Moment in Becca's Life" happened in the same year as the Bertha barrel roll incident of the '97-'98 school year.


The fourth grade was a rough time for me.


Now, for those of you who don't know me personally, I have extremely curly hair.  I have the type of curls that people pay insane amounts of money to get. ON PURPOSE. Think of that perm your mother forced you to get in middle school right before picture day, thinking that it would look amazing, when in reality it looked like a poodle stuck its paw in an electrical outlet and got shocked, and then died.  On top of your head.  That's the type of hair I have. 


I promise, there was a reason I brought this up.  I also needed to make sure you all have the proper image in your head before I begin.


This story is about the first and only time I succumbed to peer pressure.


My friend decided she wanted to have a slumber party with a few of the girls in my grade.  This was the first real slumber party I had ever been to, and I mean one with more than just two of us.  I was excited, yet nervous.  You see, there was a reason I never did sleepovers.  I am a very violent sleeper and was incredibly concerned with what might happen were I to be left in a room full of sleeping people without my parents present.  I am still very self-conscious about this, because I once almost killed my sister, Rachel.  If my dad didn't hear her gasping for air, I would be writing this on the walls of my prison cell using my own blood for ink. True story.


Anyway, it was the end of school on a Friday, we all gathered at the front of the school so we could walk to my friend's house and get girls night going.  I was told there was going to be pizza when we got there, so I basically ran the entire way, and left everyone else in my dust.  You see, my family is the size of a small army.  I was used/am used to having to fight my siblings for food, and rarely did I come out on top.  Not this time.  This time, I was going to be in a house with 7 girls that didn't know what survival was.  This was it, this was my time to shine.


I, of course, claimed roughly 2 large pizzas for myself and plopped myself in a corner of her bedroom and didn't move for hours.  Mostly because I was just as stuffed as the crust on my pizza, but also because I had really only come for the free food.


The slumber party consisted of your typical "girly" activities: we had a dance party, watched some Disney movies, played "Light as a Feather, Stiff as a Board" to see if any of us had any magical powers, and gave each other make overs.


That last event is the one that haunts my nights.  My friend, who we will call Lucinda, because I can't really remember whose goddamn house it was, brought out all sorts of make up and hair products and accessories.  Everyone squealed with excitement.  I, however, let out more of a muffled groan, because I had just eaten my weight in dough and cheese, but no one could really tell the difference. Or they really didn't care.


Everyone grabbed their favorite pieces of make up and a mirror and started getting glammed up.  I just stared at the baskets of stuff wondering what I was supposed to do with the items in them.  I was 9.  I had zero interest in things that weren't The Goosebumps books, or The Ninja Turtles.  So I grabbed some blue lipstick and just faked my way through it.


So, there were about 7 other girls at this house, and all of them had pin straight hair.  Naturally, one of my loudmouth friends, who wasn't really my friend because she was a loudmouth, decided she wanted to curl everyone's hair.  Including mine.  Seeing as how I already have curly hair, I said her idea was stupid, because it was.  WHY ARE YOU GOING TO CURL HAIR THAT IS ALREADY CURLY YOU DUMB STRAIGHT-HAIRED IDIOT?!  Looking back, I wish I said this and saved myself some embarrassment, but I didn't. 


After she had gotten through about 3 girl's hair, she looked at me and told me it was my turn.  We continued to fight for about 30 minutes until I caved and let her do it.  Which. Was. Stupid.


Within 20 seconds of her wrapping a fairly large strand tightly around the curling iron, I hear the words "uh-oh."  I panicked.  The mother fucking curling iron was now stuck in my hair and still very much on.  As my scalp was literally being burned off of my skull, I started screaming at her, and one of my other genius friends grabbed a comb and hairbrush thinking that they would somehow brush the curling iron of death out of my hair.  This turned out to be an even worse idea, because they too, got stuck.


I now had a curling iron, a comb, and a hairbrush making a new home on the top of my head, as I was running around like a dog on a leash.  Literally.  The curling iron was still plugged in as I ran across the room, and it stayed plugged in as it yanked me to the ground when I ran out of cord.


I ended up having to call my mom to come get me and to untangle these objects from my hair.  To my mom's credit, she didn't get annoyed or make fun of me once for this, and she saved all of my hair.  I didn't have to go walking around with a singed bald spot for months.  So, thanks for that Liz.


Shortly after this, I stopped being friends with Curling Iron Susie  (not her real name, but she doesn't get the satisfaction of me using her real name after what she did.)    I also didn't go to a slumber party for another 6 years because of this.  Turns out, my totally justified concern about possibly murdering my friends in my sleep wasn't the biggest issue that night.  Who knew?




Becca's Adulthood Survival Tip #7:  Never succumb to peer pressure.  Your friends are usually idiots.  Do whatever you want.  Also, don't be a dick and pressure your friends and make them feel like shit for making their own decisions separate from your influence.  It goes both ways.

#2

The second story that has been nominated for "Most Embarrassing Moment in Becca's Life" happened when I was 9 years old.

It was the beginning of the school year; I was in the 4th grade.  I had just recently become an aunt for the first time, I had most of my close friends in my class, and I liked my teacher.  Honestly, it looked like I was headed for a great year.  Oh how wrong I was.

Now, you are thinking to yourself, "What happened?! Did her dog die? Did she accidentally call her teacher 'Mom?'  Did she fall in front of the whole school?"  The answer to those questions are yes, but not that year.

What happened to me, is honestly much worse than that, and it happened, like most embarrassing middle school stories do; on the playground.

Like most middle schools, mine consisted of children in grades 3 through 6.  The school had 2 wings, you had the 3rd and 4th grades down one hallway, and the 5th and 6th grades down the other.  At either end of the school, there were 2 separate playgrounds, one of which has haunted my dreams for 18 years.

It was a fairly normal playground, a couple of swing sets, some monkey bars, and a slide.  Seeing as how there weren't that many options for entertainment, we used to play games outside as well.  There were the usual schoolyard games, Red Rover, tag, kickball, etc.  My favorite game, however, became my undoing. 

Children's imaginations sometimes get the best of them.  My friends and I were constantly trying to think of new ways to have fun on the playground.  For some reason, all our "fun" ideas involved the cornerstone of it: the slide.  Now, this wasn't your typical slide.  She was practically perfect.  It was a million feet tall, realistically it was probably around 6 or 7 feet, but I was 9, and had no real concept of height.  It was a beautiful stainless steel and barely even burned you when it was hot out.  The exposed bolts were so few that you rarely cut yourself.  This was the Beauty Queen of slides.  I named her Bertha.

The day Bertha betrayed me, was a normal day in the life of a 4th grader.  I got up and got dressed, made it to school, said something stupid to my teacher, and then played outside.  Typical.

When recess began, we all swarmed around the slide to start our game.  The point of the game was to see how many people we could actually fit on the slide at one time.  We would send down one person at a time, and they would have to stop themselves from actually exiting the slide.  The strongest person always went first, of course, because he/she would have to hold up the rest of us.  There was a special technique to this game.  You had to slide down sideways, with your legs hanging over the side of the slide, and you would have to have a firm grip but not too firm that it stopped you from actually moving.  This may sound confusing, so I have included an artist's rendering of the scenario below.

I am the artist.

 

I was a very gender neutral child.  I don't like the terms "girly" or "tomboy" because I think that limits children, but I definitely had my own sense of, what I considered, style.  I dressed how I dressed and acted how I acted.  I didn't necessarily like wearing dresses, but I didn't always hate it and occasionally wouldn't fight Liz when she suggested I wear one. This happened to be one of the days that I didn't fight her.  I wore a cute black and white checkered sleeveless jumper which I wore over a short sleeved turtleneck that had two small teddy bears holding hands with a heart in between them.  It was still fairly cold out, so I wore black tights that day, too.

 

Anyway, we had all begun waiting for our turn to climb Bertha's perfectly spaced stairs.  I was 5th in line.

 

The adrenaline was pumping through me.  Only 4 more people to go.  This was my favorite place to be.  Yes, now 3 more people.  I couldn't wait, I was getting so excited.  Now, only 2 more.  I had been practicing my technique for days, I was going to rock this.  Oh my god, one more person.  You can do this.  Yes! MY TURN!  As I climbed up the steps to the summit, my breath caught in my throat, and my hands gripped the railings tightly.  I was nervous.  What if I fell?  No, you can't worry about that now, let's do this.

 

I wish, so much, that I had simply fallen.

 

I sat down, turned my legs to the right as to let them dangle over the side of Bertha and let myself fly.  But I swung my legs too hard and ended up facing the top of the slide as I barrel rolled downward, my legs spread-eagle, making eye contact with the boy who was next in line at the top of the slide.  I flipped backward with such force that I knocked into the person below me so hard that it launched everyone off of the slide and onto the wet ground.

 

Again, here is an artist's rendering.

 

 

We were just a huddled mass of limbs on the ground.  I was on the top of the pile.  I fumbled my way into standing up, grumbling, covered in mulch and mud.  Embarrassed, and on the verge of tears, I ran as fast as my chubby legs could carry me, to the bathroom to clean up.  I locked myself in the stall for the rest of recess, I couldn't face my classmates.  Especially the boy who just saw more of me than he probably had planned to that morning.

 

I wanted to die that day.  You think you're safe, you think that bad things won't happen to you in your favorite place.  You are so happy, and carefree, how could anything go wrong?  You are just going down a slide, what's the worst that could happen?

I didn't go out for recess for about 2 weeks after that, I stayed inside and read.  I figured that reading couldn't hurt you.  They are just words.  It was then that I discovered Charlotte's Web and realized that everything hurts and life is stupid.

 

Becca's Adulthood Survival Tip #6:  Be careful.  It's the most beautiful ones that hurt you the most.