Awkward Anecdotes

writ­ten 12/5/2020, updat­ed 9/28/2025

An on-going log of embar­rass­ing mem­o­ries.

~Door­way Dance — The build­ing man­ag­er for the office build­ing I work in is a tall man with a huge bel­ly. We nick­named him “Bel­ly Man.” He’s a sin­gle guy in his late 50s or so and he’s, in a word, kind of creepy. He’s nice enough and means well, but if you were to see him about, peo­ple get afraid. He reminds me of a big troll. He likes me and is my patient which makes every­thing awk­ward. Some­times, I swear he watch­es me on the cam­era because sud­den­ly he’s there to open the build­ing door for me the moment I round the cor­ner. Any­ways, as I was ascend­ing the stairs one day, I hear his voice talk­ing to some­one else, but I’m com­mit­ted and keep going up. There he is in the door­way I need, so I saw hi. From the out­side of the door (it swings inwards towards me in the stair­well), he’s try­ing to hold it open for me except that his BELLY IS TOO BIG and now have this super small space to try and squeeze through. My bag is real­ly big, too, so I’m try­ing to fig­ure out how to squeeze through that lit­tle tri­an­gle of space. I make it through, but he final­ly real­izes that his bel­ly is too big, so as I go through, he kind of spins around like a bal­le­ri­na or a revolv­ing door, hands in the air. He says some­thing that I can’t hear because I died 18 lives from cringe and hur­ry into my office. UUUGGGH.

~Hair Pluck - I was work­ing on a patient who has been dif­fi­cult in the past, but likes me. Regard­less, there’s a lev­el of anx­i­ety work­ing on her. I was fin­ish­ing up, wip­ing away any paste I got on her face. There had been a hair on her lip that I’d noticed but had failed to sub­tley brush away (some­times per­haps my hair or the patients hair falls on them). It was a pret­ty long, thick hair, about 2–3 inch­es long and blond (there­fore NOT mine). Final­ly, I just went ahead and tugged on it quick­ly, afraid that she’d feel it and notice a hair on her face. Turns out, it was con­nect­ed to her lip mole and she flinched when I pulled. SUPER EMBARRASSED, I ran out of the room to “go get the doc­tor.” As a side note, the next time I saw her a few years lat­er, she no longer had it on her face.

~I can’t see - When I was still in high school, I went with my mom to Chick-fil‑a to order food. It was our turn and she asked me what I want­ed. I had trou­ble see­ing the menu because I did­n’t have my glass­es on, so I remem­bered that if you nar­row your field of vision, your acu­ity increas­es slight­ly, and used both of my hands cupped like binoc­u­lars over my eyes. My mom jabbed me real­ly hard and hissed at me to stop that. She was embar­rassed and my mom rarely gets embar­rassed! At first I was annoyed, but then it dawned on me how weird that looked. And Chick-fil‑a is usu­al­ly quite crowd­ed. Oops.

~Duh­h­hh — I was sit­ting in front of my high school with my broth­er wait­ing to be picked up. We were both play­ing games on our graph­ic cal­cu­la­tors because this was before cell phones were wide­spread and well before smart phones (pay phones were a thing in schools!). A woman, clear­ly a mom, walks up to us and asks if we knew where the Japan­ese Club was meet­ing. Of course I knew, I took Japan­ese class! It was just inside the cafe­te­ria and I want­ed to tell her as much, except…all that came out of my mouth was, “Duh, duh, duh, duh.” I looked wild­ly around while these sounds were com­ing out of my mouth and begged my broth­er for help with my eyes. His eyes were firm­ly glued to his cal­cu­la­tor and a smirk plas­tered on his face. The woman high­tailed it out of there with­out anoth­er word and I was left going, WTF just hap­pened?? My broth­er prompt­ly bust­ed out laugh­ing and I’m sure the woman thought I was a spe­cial needs stu­dent.

~Butt poke - When I was very very small and about the height of peo­ple’s butts, we were shop­ping at Sears at the mall in the clothes sec­tion. I used to like to hide inside the clothes racks. Well, when I came out, I went look­ing for my mom who’d gone some­where. That’s when I saw her with her back to me, those famil­iar pur­ple leg­gings she wore in front of me. I went and poked her butt hard with my lit­tle fin­ger. An old lady turned around and it was def­i­nite­ly NOT my mom. I start­ed cry­ing right away and I don’t real­ly remem­ber what hap­pened after that except I was old enough to feel very embar­rassed and that I was even­tu­al­ly reunit­ed with my mom.

~Gift — A co-work­er of mine was leav­ing for green­er pas­tures and on her last day he brought in gifts for every­one. I had com­plete­ly for­got­ten. She gave me mine and I thanked her and when I went to put it in my bag I remem­bered the dog-a-day desk cal­en­dar I’d been mean­ing to bring and hap­pi­ly brought it out. As I was unwrap­ping it in front of this co-work­er I was excit­ed­ly telling her about mean­ing to bring the thing in for a while. It was­n’t until I was putting it on oper­a­to­ry that I real­ized that she was expect­ing me to have brought her a gift. Ooops. Got her a fruit box deliv­ery soon there­after.

~Wed­ding Card — There was a point in my life where I was very proud of writ­ing poems. My co-work­er was get­ting mar­ried and I wrote her a poem inside of a card. Here’s what it said:

I wish you love,
I say con­grats,
Like a glove,
Like nice hats,
You fit like glue
No longer one but two.

I was super proud of it but when she was read­ing it, I got a sink­ing feel­ing in my gut that the last part sound­ed total­ly wrong. I meant like, she was no longer sin­gle but dou­ble. Instead it sound­ed like they were break­ing up. Geez.

~“I Hope” — One of my long-term patients came in with the snif­fles and say­ing he had a cold. While gen­er­al­ly we frown upon patients com­ing that are sick, I’m not going to turn them away unless they had a fever. Went through the appoint­ment, every­thing was fine, when he got up to leave, I cheer­ful­ly said to him, “I hope you kick it soon!” He turned with a frown and I sud­den­ly real­ized what I’d said and tried to save it quick­ly with, “THE COLD. I hope you kick THE COLD soon!” *Facepalm*

~Deep­er — I was see­ing a patient that I cringe when­ev­er I see his name on my sched­ule. Things were going okay and he told me, as I was doing his low­er front teeth, that he gets “a per­verse plea­sure” when­ev­er those teeth are cleaned so long as it does­n’t hit his gums because he can’t stand that feel­ing. I, per­son­al­ly, love clean­ings, so I told him that my favorite place is in his place in the whole office because I love clean­ings. I said, “I love it. You could dig at me all day and I’m like, ‘Go hard­er! Go Deep­er!’ ” I froze as soon as I said that and on any oth­er patient it might go over well, albeit awk­ward­ly. He, of course, got this nasty smile on his face after I said that while I pre­tend­ed that it was total­ly nor­mal what had just come from my mouth. Geez.

~Arm Punch — After my first date with my ex-boyfriend, we had def­i­nite­ly felt the spark. He drove me home from the day’s adven­tures and I was freak­ing out about how to end the date. What do I do? We were kind of sit­ting there in front of my house in his truck and he turned towards me with antic­i­pa­tion, I pan­icked, thanked him and punched him in the arm before hop­ping out and run­ning to my house. His face was price­less when I did that, one of utter shock mixed with amuse­ment. I’m laugh­ing writ­ing about it now. He nev­er did let me live that down.

~Par­al­lel Park­ing a Hon­da Fit — I was try­ing to park my mom’s Hon­da Fit on the street. I mean, it’s a Hon­da Fit. It’s tiny, but I’m a ter­ri­ble par­al­lel park­er. Regard­less, I thought that even I should be able to park the car and the spot I’d seen while walk­ing the dogs seemed per­fect. I drove out and pro­ceed­ed to back in just like I was taught all of those years ago. I think I cor­rect­ed like 10 times before I saw some peo­ple star­ing at me mouth agape. Embar­rassed, I drove off and found a real­ly huge spot even though it was far­ther away. Parked, and real­ized that even though I thought I was real­ly close to the cars in front and behind me, when I stepped out­side, I was parked in a spot big enough for 3 cars. After fix­ing myself, I walked back to the place I ini­tial­ly tried to park in and imme­di­ate­ly facepalmed myself. Two sedans in the mean time had parked them­selves neat­ly in it. Ugh. No won­der those peo­ple were star­ing.

~Eat­ing Pil­low — I was dream­ing about eat­ing my aun­t’s hol­i­day desserts. I crammed them all in my mouth because they were so good, but sud­den­ly I was chok­ing. I could not breathe, but I kept chew­ing and try­ing to swal­low because I did­n’t want to spit them out they were so good. I kept chok­ing and chok­ing until I woke up and found that I’d been eat­ing my pil­low. The part of the pil­low­case that I was try­ing to eat had been tight­ly twist­ed and was com­plete­ly soaked in my sali­va. I was astound­ed and extreme­ly embar­rassed that I could have passed out from dream-eat­ing.

~Class Rank — It was my high school grad­u­a­tion. I attend­ed that high school from 10–12 grade, hav­ing been a fresh­man at a dif­fer­ent school with the peo­ple I grew up with. I’d nev­er fit in well at the new school at all (not only was my eco­nom­ic class dif­fer­ent, but I was one out of 5 total Asians in the school) but I was okay with my small group of friends. They were award­ing medals to the top 10 stu­dents. I’d orches­trat­ed my 5th place rank (to ensure I’d nei­ther be Vale­dic­to­ri­an nor Salu­ta­to­ri­an) and was proud of myself. As I strut­ted up to accept my rank and medal, I heard not-so-soft whis­pers all around me ask­ing, “Who is that? Who IS that???” Admit­ted­ly, it put a ner­vous damper on my excite­ment, but not too much because I real­ized I’d nev­er have to care about those peo­ple and their opin­ions any­more.

~Umbrel­la Hat - I was super excit­ed about my new pur­chase from Ama­zon of a rain­bow col­ored umbrel­la hat. It would make walk­ing my 2 dogs in the rain a cinch! Both hands free, no need for a rain jack­et in the sum­mer, and stay­ing dry? YES! Well I put it on my head one rainy morn­ing and left to walk my 2 pups. They, of course, had zero care and I was so proud of myself. We round­ed the cor­ner at the busy 4‑way stop, and there was this kid rid­ing by on his bike (maybe 10 or 12 or so) he coast­ed slow­ly by, mouth com­plete­ly agape, eyes wide, star­ing at me. My pride wavered but I told myself that was just a kid and I did­n’t care about his judge­ment. The self-con­scious­ness was start­ing to set­tle in, though, and I turned around to go home. A cou­ple cars passed by and hit the brakes as they caught sight of me, dri­ving sus­pi­cious­ly slow­ly as if some­one was tak­ing pic­tures inside or laugh­ing. Not just one car. A cou­ple cars. *sigh* Need­less to say, that was the first and last time I ever wore that umbrel­la hat in pub­lic.

~Oniony Good­ness — I was in col­lege, the weath­er was warm, and I’d went down to the male floor to vis­it some guy friends. He One of them def­i­nite­ly had a crush on me and I was kind of feel­ing it out. I poked my head in to give them some­thing (a mes­sage or an item I can’t remem­ber) and was about to leave when I caught the scent of some food. I fig­ured they had just ordered some Chi­nese eggrolls because it was real­ly a very oniony smell and I could just pic­ture the duck sauce in my head. I inhaled deeply and said, wow, some­thing smells fan­tas­tic like eggrolls, I’m get­ting hun­gry. There was a tense­ness in the room and no one said any­thing. I was con­fused by the awk­ward­ness when it hit me that it was­n’t eggrolls at all. It was body odor. Sweat. Specif­i­cal­ly John’s armpit sweat. I quick­ly closed the door and about died against the wall before rac­ing upstairs back to my room to fin­ish dying there.

~Bad Lis­ten­er — Stuff like this hap­pens on numer­ous occa­sions espe­cial­ly at work since I lis­ten to a LOT of small talk and ran­dom crap that patients spout at me. There are some very talk­a­tive peo­ple out there. One par­tic­u­lar day I was so over every­thing and was only half-lis­ten­ing to what peo­ple were say­ing to me. Most of the time, a well placed, “ohh!” or “Wooow,” or “that’s crazy!” is suf­fi­cient for most con­ver­sa­tions so that I can get back to doing my job quick­ly. I decid­ed to laugh after a patient was say­ing some­thing and said some­thing along the lines of “that’s funny/interesting” before try­ing to get my instru­ments back into her mouth to work. She pulled back to the side a lit­tle, looked point­ed­ly at me, and stat­ed, “I said my moth­er just died.” I froze, humil­i­at­ed by my crass­ness, and apol­o­gized. The patient seemed to quick­ly for­give me (it’s nice when patients like you) and I strove to pay more atten­tion after that.

~Real Job — I worked sea­son­al retail once and not only did I gain the favor of man­age­ment, but of high­er-lev­el asso­ciates. One team lead in par­tic­u­lar was very fond of me and had me work with her at cus­tomer ser­vice often. Sea­son end­ed, and most peo­ple weren’t invit­ed back. Though I was, I turned it down because I gained more hours in the career I went to school for. I came back one time to the store to buy some­thing and ran into the team lead I’d worked with. She was excit­ed to see me, and I was glad to see her too. She asked me why I was­n’t work­ing for them any­more and though I meant some­thing dif­fer­ent, what came out of my mouth was, “Oh, I got a real job.” WTF. What I had meant to say was that I’d land­ed a reg­u­lar job, but it mixed in there with I now work in my real career aspi­ra­tions. It came out VERY wrong, and her face fell imme­di­ate­ly. There was NO WAY to take back what I’d said, no way to cor­rect it any­more, and I just felt like scum. Absolute scum. Short­ly there­after, the com­pa­ny went out of busi­ness, but it still haunts me.