It was one of the most humiliating experiences of my life and, like most truly humiliating experiences, it makes for a pretty funny story. I'm not quite sure I find it entirely funny, but I am assured that the passing of time (years, maybe) will remove my embarrassment and I will be able to enjoy it just as much as anyone else. Other people are distanced from it by place... I simply need to wait to be sufficiently distanced by time.
It really was rather ridiculous.
First, let me set the scene. It was a sunny Sunday afternoon at TAC. Campus was busy being its usual, beautiful, yet sometimes claustrophobia-inducing self. I was studying upstairs in the library. I didn't typically study in the library, but this wasn't a typical day. This particular day played host to a once-a-semester event, called a Schubertiade. This event was an occasion for students to perform classical - and occasionally not so classical - musical pieces. Since the College does not have a musical program of study, apart from a toe-dip into some theory junior year, this event served as a rare opportunity for the musically inclined and (to varying degrees) talented to showcase their abilities.
The performers were staged on the first floor of the library and a number of chairs were arranged for those who chose to watch and listen actively to the performances. Others, who wished to study while listening, sat on the second floor balcony, books in hand. I was included in the latter group, although I admit that I never did get much studying done up there. I pretended to study, but I don't think I ever read more than five or ten pages during those two hours concerts.
There was another factor that made this Sunday different than any other: my family was coming to campus.
My grandfather had passed away only a few days before. The most effective way to get me to the funeral was for the rest of the family to drive up to campus, pick me up, and then all five of us would fly up to the Bay Area from the nearby airport. Not wanting to suffer through an obnoxiously long travel day, my family elected to come up to campus the day before our flight and spend the night on campus before heading to the airport the following morning.
Following this plan, my family arrived on campus during intermission. I told them of my plan to continue sitting upstairs and studying while listening to the program and they decided they would join me (for the upstairs part, not the studying part). We all settled in for what should have been a completely uneventful, not to mention unmemorable, afternoon of music. All was calm and well for about thirty minutes. Then a little storm of chaos struck.
During a Mozart piece, my mother's purse began to squeak. Startled, I turned toward her in time to see her jump and frantically try to open her purse. The squeaking became louder as the purse was unzipped. Mum began digging through the bag to find it. Lots of little thoughts popped into my head and intermingled with a sense of confusion: what was in Mum's purse? why was it squeaking? did she have a mouse in her purse?
Within seconds - although it felt like an agonizingly long stretch of time - Mum pulled out a little orange and tan, furry, and roundish thing. Not quite registering what it was exactly, but being fairly certain it wasn't alive, I watched as she unsuccessfully endeavored to silence it. I then watched as she stood, scooted over to the elevator and began frantically pushing the down button. I felt a twinge of panic as I thought of all of the elevator noises that would soon fill the air along with Mozart and rodent squeaking. I winced, but the elevator didn't move. No noises. Neglected repairs, which were usually a source of frustration, were a blessing that afternoon. I jumped up, ran over to her, and scooped the whirring, squeaking object out of her hands. Then I ran.
There was a set of stairs near me and I knew there was a door at the bottom of them. I hurried down them, attempting to muffle the squeaks by wrapping my hands around the toy - by then I deduced it was some sort of toy that was sent to plague mankind - and shoving it against my stomach. Down three fights of stairs, I stopped abruptly in front of the door that I had never used and read the "Emergency Exit" sign. I probably should have just gone out that door because I'm sure it wasn't hooked to any sort of alarm, but being a stickler for the rules, I had to move to plan B. This plan involved running up one flight of stairs, coming out on the first floor very near the piano that was being beautifully played, and then trying to quietly and quickly hurry past all of the people - tutors, students, guests - and finally make it out through the main library doors. I executed this less than ideal plan, again hugging the toy against my stomach, hunching over it to further muffle the sounds.
Once I was safely outside, I finally had a chance to examine this little noisemaker that had disrupted the solemn Mozart-filled atmosphere. It was a Zhu Zhu pet. I didn't know what it was at the time. It was a small hamster-like toy, with three small and whirring wheels that would enable it to scoot around on the ground. It's nose was a button that turned it on, leading to the whirring and squeaking that had caused my hasty exit from the library. The nose turned it on, but it didn't turn it off, which was what I wanted to do.
One of the College's tutors, seeing my flight from the library (which, it turned out, everyone watched with great amusement), had followed me outside, thinking I had caught a live rodent (the conclusion most people reached, apparently). When he saw me busily futzing with a toy, which was still emitting high-pitched squeaks, he offered his assistance. With his daughter clinging to his leg and begging to play with it, he attempted to find the off switch for about five minutes before he admitted defeat and handed the toy back to me. Since I had despaired of finding the button myself, I sat down on the grass, put the toy in my lap, and let it squeak and whir until stopped of its own accord. I assumed it would stop eventually, which turned out to be an interval of about 7 minutes. I wasn't in a hurry to get back in the library; the concert was nearly over and I had caused enough of a scene by running out of the library. I had no desire to leave more of an impression by trying to sneak back up to my perch. When the concert ended and people trickled out of the library, I found my family and returned the toy to my mother. I asked the obvious questions of "what is that thing?" and "why did it start making noise?" to which I received this answer: it was a Zhu Zhu pet that she had purchased and brought to help cheer me up. She had put it in her purse to show me later and must've bumped its nose inadvertently during the concert. Then the chaos ensued.
Needless to say, this whole episode sparked quite a big of curiosity among my schoolmates and, once explained, the story was told frequently and repeatedly. It was an easy way to embarrass me and, as we all know, friends exist to embarrass us whenever possible.
My 19 year old self found this occurrence to be totally and completely humiliating. My friends thought it was hysterically funny... and I admit that the passing of five years had significantly reduced the sting of it. I can admit it's funny... mostly. A bit of humble pie is good once in a while, yes?
(hop over here to read Mum's side of the story)
Showing posts with label Embarrassed. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Embarrassed. Show all posts
16 September 2014
25 May 2013
The Path of Frugality Leads to an Ambulance
This story takes place in 2005. It was adventure of a lifetime. Also super embarrassing, pretty gross, and way too much information to be sharing with you guys. But that hasn't ever stopped me before. Ha! :)
I had spent eight days in Ireland with friends, having the time of my life. We saw as much as was humanly possible in eight days. This involved not really ever getting out of the car, except for short stints through a town to pick up more nutella. It was an incredibly cheap trip - my part, including airfare, was about $500.
When I got home, I was incredibly sleep deprived and jet lagged, but nothing else seemed wrong with me. That turned out to be very not true.
About two weeks after being stateside, I noticed a strange tingling in my feet. It was like they were constantly "waking up." You know the feeling... numb and tingly and remarkably painful. You also know me (to varying degrees), so you know that I wasn't terribly worried about this development. Stranger things are always happening to me. I just carried on with my pseudo-normal life.
Later that week, it was getting harder to ignore. All of the muscles in both of my legs were completely contracted. Yes, this seems impossible since they go in different directions, but that's what happened. Every muscle was tensed, which put all sorts of strange strain on my joints, tendons, ligaments, and patience. I couldn't walk normally. I did the toddler walk: all joints locked, just swinging the whole of my leg in a weird semi-arc.
This was incredibly unusual, even for me. To the doctor we went. Since I had recently been out of the country, the first assumption was that I had acquired some sort of water-borne parasite. I was sampled from many, uh, angles, but nothing showed. "Everything looks fine," they said. Obviously things weren't fine because a fourteen year old couldn't walk, but whatever.
I related this tale to my physical therapist during one of my routine appointments and she... freaked out. Ok, KC was prone to panicking when it came to me, but this merited a bit of panic. Especially after she ran some neurological-muscular system tests. And I failed. All of them. Spectacularly.
She ran to the nearest phone and called her friend, the head neurologist at Children's Hospital and asked him to come back to the hospital. He had just gotten home after a 24 hour shift, but she insisted that he come back just for me. Then she trundled me across the street to the hospital. I was x-rayed, catheterized, rectal examined, and prodded til I cried. The neurologist took my frighteningly bad test results and told me either I had this thing were the end of your spinal chord starts fraying like a horse's tail, which basically meant I would die OR he had no idea what was wrong with me so I would probably die before they knew how to fix me. GREAT. Just what I wanted to hear.
He ordered a STAT MRI, which ended up being at like midnight or 2 in the morning or something crazy like that. He told us he'd call with the results as soon as he could get them. I went home, limping and crying pathetically, to await the news.
When I woke up the next morning, the rigid muscle thing had spread up to my stomach and back. Breathing required Herculean effort. I was lying on the floor, gasping for air, and Mum called the hospital. The order to ship me to the hospital was given and we packed me into the car. It was raining, the freeway was backed up and Mum decided that this was just a stupid way to take someone in respiratory distress to the hospital. She pulled off at the fire station and requested help. The station's own paramedics were out on a call, so they called the neighboring station to come get me. As eight incredibly good looking young men got out of their red vehicles, they were all laughing to themselves about how they had never rescued someone at someone else's station before. They found it super amusing.
I was not terribly amused. I was not terribly thrilled, either. I had always thought that it would be fun to ride in an ambulance. Lemme tell you, though: it's not. Especially when you're strapped to a backboard and poked full of IVs and attached to a 18 lead EKG. It's just bumpy, uncomfortable, and you repeatedly slide nearly off of the gurney. Not fun. At least until they pump you full of morphine. Then it's fun. I don't remember much of it. I just remember being incredibly pleased with life.
Once in the emergency room, the doctor ordered more x-rays. I protested, insisting that I had already had x-rays and that I was tired of them. She didn't heed my protestations, but wheeled me off to the x-ray tech. The doctor came in with my x-rays, put them on the board, turned to me and said, "You're full of it."
Uh, what?
I stared at her, still very drugged, but awake enough to realize that I should be incredulous. "Full of it," she repeated. "Full of poop." She pointed to the abdominal x-rays and explained the significance of the big grey blob. "See this?" she said. "This shouldn't all be there. There's so much stuff in there that it's pressing on your spinal chord. That's why you're having neurological symptoms. We'll just give you an enema and you should feel pretty normal in a few days. It will only take about a year to be absolutely fine."
"Buuuuut...." I couldn't really formulate a more cohesive thought than that. I was incredibly embarrassed. Specialists, MRIs, culture analysis, an ambulance ride, etc... all because I was constipated?
"Don't worry, honey. I know this is embarrassing. But really, it's actually completely appropriate that you were rushed here in an ambulance. A few more hours, you would have gone septic and would have been in the hospital for months. You really could have died."
Oh. Death by constipation. That was a novel concept.
And so, the moral of the story is: don't travel too cheaply. If you don't eat right and don't ever get out of a car, you will throw off your internal equilibrium and end up in the hospital. And hospital bills are much larger than food bills.
I had spent eight days in Ireland with friends, having the time of my life. We saw as much as was humanly possible in eight days. This involved not really ever getting out of the car, except for short stints through a town to pick up more nutella. It was an incredibly cheap trip - my part, including airfare, was about $500.
When I got home, I was incredibly sleep deprived and jet lagged, but nothing else seemed wrong with me. That turned out to be very not true.
About two weeks after being stateside, I noticed a strange tingling in my feet. It was like they were constantly "waking up." You know the feeling... numb and tingly and remarkably painful. You also know me (to varying degrees), so you know that I wasn't terribly worried about this development. Stranger things are always happening to me. I just carried on with my pseudo-normal life.
Later that week, it was getting harder to ignore. All of the muscles in both of my legs were completely contracted. Yes, this seems impossible since they go in different directions, but that's what happened. Every muscle was tensed, which put all sorts of strange strain on my joints, tendons, ligaments, and patience. I couldn't walk normally. I did the toddler walk: all joints locked, just swinging the whole of my leg in a weird semi-arc.
This was incredibly unusual, even for me. To the doctor we went. Since I had recently been out of the country, the first assumption was that I had acquired some sort of water-borne parasite. I was sampled from many, uh, angles, but nothing showed. "Everything looks fine," they said. Obviously things weren't fine because a fourteen year old couldn't walk, but whatever.
I related this tale to my physical therapist during one of my routine appointments and she... freaked out. Ok, KC was prone to panicking when it came to me, but this merited a bit of panic. Especially after she ran some neurological-muscular system tests. And I failed. All of them. Spectacularly.
She ran to the nearest phone and called her friend, the head neurologist at Children's Hospital and asked him to come back to the hospital. He had just gotten home after a 24 hour shift, but she insisted that he come back just for me. Then she trundled me across the street to the hospital. I was x-rayed, catheterized, rectal examined, and prodded til I cried. The neurologist took my frighteningly bad test results and told me either I had this thing were the end of your spinal chord starts fraying like a horse's tail, which basically meant I would die OR he had no idea what was wrong with me so I would probably die before they knew how to fix me. GREAT. Just what I wanted to hear.
He ordered a STAT MRI, which ended up being at like midnight or 2 in the morning or something crazy like that. He told us he'd call with the results as soon as he could get them. I went home, limping and crying pathetically, to await the news.
When I woke up the next morning, the rigid muscle thing had spread up to my stomach and back. Breathing required Herculean effort. I was lying on the floor, gasping for air, and Mum called the hospital. The order to ship me to the hospital was given and we packed me into the car. It was raining, the freeway was backed up and Mum decided that this was just a stupid way to take someone in respiratory distress to the hospital. She pulled off at the fire station and requested help. The station's own paramedics were out on a call, so they called the neighboring station to come get me. As eight incredibly good looking young men got out of their red vehicles, they were all laughing to themselves about how they had never rescued someone at someone else's station before. They found it super amusing.
I was not terribly amused. I was not terribly thrilled, either. I had always thought that it would be fun to ride in an ambulance. Lemme tell you, though: it's not. Especially when you're strapped to a backboard and poked full of IVs and attached to a 18 lead EKG. It's just bumpy, uncomfortable, and you repeatedly slide nearly off of the gurney. Not fun. At least until they pump you full of morphine. Then it's fun. I don't remember much of it. I just remember being incredibly pleased with life.
Once in the emergency room, the doctor ordered more x-rays. I protested, insisting that I had already had x-rays and that I was tired of them. She didn't heed my protestations, but wheeled me off to the x-ray tech. The doctor came in with my x-rays, put them on the board, turned to me and said, "You're full of it."
Uh, what?
I stared at her, still very drugged, but awake enough to realize that I should be incredulous. "Full of it," she repeated. "Full of poop." She pointed to the abdominal x-rays and explained the significance of the big grey blob. "See this?" she said. "This shouldn't all be there. There's so much stuff in there that it's pressing on your spinal chord. That's why you're having neurological symptoms. We'll just give you an enema and you should feel pretty normal in a few days. It will only take about a year to be absolutely fine."
"Buuuuut...." I couldn't really formulate a more cohesive thought than that. I was incredibly embarrassed. Specialists, MRIs, culture analysis, an ambulance ride, etc... all because I was constipated?
"Don't worry, honey. I know this is embarrassing. But really, it's actually completely appropriate that you were rushed here in an ambulance. A few more hours, you would have gone septic and would have been in the hospital for months. You really could have died."
Oh. Death by constipation. That was a novel concept.
And so, the moral of the story is: don't travel too cheaply. If you don't eat right and don't ever get out of a car, you will throw off your internal equilibrium and end up in the hospital. And hospital bills are much larger than food bills.
07 April 2013
How It Ended
So, you know that battery story? The one that involved fondue skewers, baking soda, and a freezer? Well... it ended in the most embarrassing way possible.
Off to the Genius Bar at the Apple store we went. I explained the problem and enumerated some of the ways in which I tried to solve the problem. Chris, the young man who was helping me, graciously took the keyboard into the back to try something. He came out five minutes later to tell me that... wait for it...
this model only has two batteries in it.
Not three. That thing I was trying to get out? Not a battery. Just part of the keyboard that looks deceptively like the positive end of a battery.
Here's the kicker: there's a little tiny diagram on the back depicting two batteries. The main purpose is to show you which direction the batteries should go, but there are two of them. I totally didn't notice that the picture was there. Instead, I spent two hours trying to get a non-existent battery out.
I am so humiliated. Not about what happened at the store. Chris was very gracious. I'm super embarrassed that I didn't notice that. I am embarrassed for myself. Ohhhh, boy.
And that, dear readers, is how it ended. *face palm*
Off to the Genius Bar at the Apple store we went. I explained the problem and enumerated some of the ways in which I tried to solve the problem. Chris, the young man who was helping me, graciously took the keyboard into the back to try something. He came out five minutes later to tell me that... wait for it...
this model only has two batteries in it.
Not three. That thing I was trying to get out? Not a battery. Just part of the keyboard that looks deceptively like the positive end of a battery.
Here's the kicker: there's a little tiny diagram on the back depicting two batteries. The main purpose is to show you which direction the batteries should go, but there are two of them. I totally didn't notice that the picture was there. Instead, I spent two hours trying to get a non-existent battery out.
I am so humiliated. Not about what happened at the store. Chris was very gracious. I'm super embarrassed that I didn't notice that. I am embarrassed for myself. Ohhhh, boy.
And that, dear readers, is how it ended. *face palm*
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)