Mortified Times Two

You know how sometimes the "What is Your Most Embarrassing Moment?" question can come up in a conversation? Usually everyone talks about saying something stupid in front of a crowd, or passing a little wind in front of a crush. Well I've always had the same old stock answer beginning with, "This one time in Middle School Band." This surprisingly is not as cool as saying, “This One Time at Band Camp." I played flute throughout my middle school career, this makes me an ex-flautist or a flautist in recovery. Does anyone else think that "flautist" doesn't even sound like a real word? I had to google "flautist" just to verify that I didn’t just make that word up. Anyway, I was actually a pretty good flautist, but my nervousness always got in my way. I would get so nervous before tryouts that I was always tripping over my notes. My band director told me I was the most nervous student he ever had! My anxiety is why I dropped out of band after middle school never to be a flautist again.

The hardest part of telling this story is describing the band room. Our band room had graduated levels just like in the picture above. But our band room's levels were much taller. The first level was a foot off the ground, the second level was two feet off the ground, and the third level was three feet off the ground, and so on. One day we were practicing some song for regionals, and I was sitting on the last seat of the third level. Can you see where this is heading? Half-way through the song I must have shifted my seat some how, because I could feel the leg of my chair begin to tip over the edge. I'm sure all of this happened in a nano second, but in my mind it was like slow motion. For some reason (I guess I thought it would anchor me), I grabbed the music stand as I started to fall. So now not only was I falling, music was flying everyone, and I come down with a big, metal sounding clang.

The people who were sitting next to me immediately stopped playing and broke into fits of laughter. One by one every section in the band caught on to what was going on and they started laughing to. Even the band conductor who was trying to keep the band going eventually had to give up and was laughing. And I'm just lying on the floor in shock, trying to figure out how I'm going to pick my wounded pride up off the floor. That day all day everyone kept asking me about it, and I thought I was going to die of embarrassment. Me falling those three feet was the biggest thing that happened in band class until some boys were rough housing and broke a window by knocking a tuba through it.

That truly was my most embarrassing day until last Friday.

So recently I joined a gym, because I find it really easy to diet and exercise during the summer. This is because I'm not working a whole lot, and I lack the disposable income to eat lots of junk food. I lost 30 lbs last summer, and pretty much kept it off during the year  (other than about five pounds). So I'm hoping to lose 30 more lbs this summer.

In the mornings Adam and I carpool together because my gym and his office are only a few blocks apart. But Friday morning I was feeling particularly lazy. I figured I shouldn't have to walk to the gym since I was going to go work-out anyway. I mean come on I don't want to risk squeezing in any extra calorie burn, that would be ridiculous. So I had Adam drop me off at the gym before he went on to work. This one decision would set off a disastrous chain of events that I would later regret.

Flash forward 50 minutes later, I'm killing it on the treadmill, listening to the Glee Cast do Madonna on the iPod. I was thinking about the show The Biggest Loser, and how they do the sprints on the treadmill and then immediately stop by jumping to the edge (without stopping the belt). That always amazes me, because I would be terrified that I would miss the edge and fall on the treadmill. And the treadmill would take me back and I would hit the wall. Ouch. So as I was pondering this, I glance out the window, and I see a man running down the plaza stairs that lead to the gym. My thought pattern went like this- "Why is that man running down the stairs? Hey, that man is wearing the same shirt that my husband was wearing this morning. Wait, that man looks kinda like my husband. Oh wait, that is my husband!"

I'm neither an optimist nor a pessimist, I’m just a fatalist. I always think something really tragic is going to happen. Like pianos falling from the sky kind of tragic. To me, the glass is neither half empty nor half full. Nope, I think the glass got so tired of trying to decide what it was, that it jumped off the ledge of the Empire State Building. So I'm thinking Adam is coming to tell me someone died, the house is on fire, or Sarah choked on a bone, and I'm freaking out a little bit. So he enters the gym and is taking forever to find me (later he said it was all the mirrors). So I call out to him loudly, and he doesn't hear me. So now everyone is looking at the loud girl on the treadmill. Remember that, everyone is staring at me! I look behind me and am about to call out to him again, when I feel myself start to trip. And just like all those years ago in the band room, everything is moving in slow motion.

I'm holding on to the bars for dear life, as the treadmill is pulling me backwards. I fell down once and was miraculously able to pull myself up halfway. Later, Adam told me it looked like I was doing the possessed version of the white guy's dance the running man. But inevitably I went down, and the treadmill took me down and threw me off. I didn't want someone helping me up, so I hopped right back on the horse err treadmill. And now I feel like I am just going to die of embarrassment. Now Adam is standing next to me, and I can just tell by the look on his face that it was just as humiliating as I thought it was. And do you know why he was at the gym in the first place? He had to give me the car keys, because he had dropped me off, and we didn't think about how I would need the car keys to get home!

I had 10 minutes left on the treadmill before ending my work out, but I really just wanted to slink off and crawl into my gym locker. But I stuck it out, and it was the longest 10 minutes I've ever spent working out.