My Most Embarrassing (Not Funny) Moment

The other day I was watching an episode of Friends where Rachel states she doesn't embarrass easily and then Ross makes it his mission to prove her wrong.

As I was watching I couldn't help think that I am the exact opposite, that embarrassment is practically a second skin to me. I can spend days agonizing over something I said or did that no one but me remembers. Oh man, I can't believe that I laughed so hard at the joke that no one else thought was funny, oh heavens to betsy everyone is going to talk about how annoying my laugh is, they're going to think my brain is made of tapioca, oh man. That's what they are going to call me. Tapioca Brain. Can't believe I did that.

Needless to say, I have never been called Tapioca Brain in my life. And honestly, it's kind of an awesome nickname. Anna "Tapioca Brain" Smith. I dig it.

I literally have Googled "How to get over embarrassment."

Who does that?

Anyway, I started thinking about why I'm like this and I started thinking about the most embarrassing moment in my life and it helped me realize some things. It's not a funny story and at the end of the day I shouldn't be embarrassed, but even thinking about writing this has made my hands shake and my stomach sick - 13 years later. Yowza.

Here's the story. Sigh.

When I moved back to the States after living overseas for the first 14 years of my life I was struggling to fit in (shocker, I know). I only had one friend at first and I was desperate for her to like me. She asked me about boys I liked and dated where I last lived (the topic of 99.9% of teenage girl conversation). Seeing as I was barely a teenager, and really a big weirdo to boot, my number of "boyfriends" was a big, fat 0.

Pause: At 27, I think it's absurd to think about kids that age dating, but at the time I felt like a failure.

I lied. I told her about this guy I had dated and how wonderful it was and blah blah blah.

I can list any number of reasons I lied, and honestly at 14 and in the middle of major transition they are reasonable explanations. But that's not the point of the story, because regardless of right or wrong actions on my part this story has haunted me for tens of years.

 Pause: not only did I lie, I lied about a specific person.

Through a series of unfortunate events, with the aid of the newly blossoming technology at the beginning of the millennium, people at my old school found out about my lie, knowing of course that I was a liar liar pants on fire.

How did I find they knew? I'm glad you asked.

Pause: It is important to note that I moved in the middle of the school year, so the following exchange was with the home room class I had just left behind.

I was sitting one night on AIM (those were the days) when my old teacher IM'ed me and said "I heard you told people that you were dating so and so. Why did you lie about that?" followed by "Don't actually answer, the whole classroom is reading this."

Pause: Time change made it the middle of the school day there.

It's over a decade later and thinking about those messages makes me want to vomit.

I flung myself off of my chair, unplugged the computer, curled up in a ball in the closet, and wailed like a child (which I was). I have amazing coping mechanisms.

I changed my AIM name, my e-mail address, and to this day I hesitate to reconnect with any of the people I went to school with there. All because at 14 I told a lie to try and fit in.  

I might actually die writing this, my blood pressure is at like a bajillion.

SO. Why am I writing this?

A. To be cathartic. This is a terrible story. Yes, it started with a lie. But what that teacher did is appalling. If I ever meet her again I will have some serious questions on her teaching methods. Putting it on the internets for all to see, while probably boring for you is a big relief for me.

B. I realized that I am so embarrassed by this story because I was shamed by someone else. Facing our failures is hard enough when it is not pointed out to us. I have no idea why that teacher wanted to shame me. I have no idea why we shame others at all. But we do. All the time. We do it to loved ones, strangers, co-works, famous people, neighbors, and ourselves. We've all acted like Mean Girls and have mental burn books. And on Wednesdays we wear pink.

C. My problem is not embarrassment. I can set off alarms at the crown jewels or vomit on airplanes and laugh about it. It's when I think I'm being judged or belittled that it haunts me, when I think I am less than.

D. We did it to Jesus. He was shamed on the cross. It's bad enough that we physically destroyed him, but we completely dehumanized him. That's what shame does. It makes you feel less than human, less worthy of love and security. It robs something fundamental to our make up. It makes you feel alone and little. Judging someone is so much more powerful then we typically believe.

E. We all deserve space and grace. From ourselves, and others. We all make mistakes, some justified, some not. What would this world be like if our love was truly unconditional for ourselves and fellow man? If confidence was allowed to grow naturally and based on our inherent worth that we have from being made in the image of God?

So my challenge to us is this: be affirming to yourself and to others. Stop the shame cycle. Stop giving Satan an easy entry in to our brains.

And if your a teacher, don't instant message with your students. It's weird.

And if you are going to call me Tapioca Brain, don't abbreviate it to TB because then I sound diseased.

Steps to Healty Conflict Resolution

Wanting to tie in what I am learning as I work on becoming a counselor with my blog, I decided to start a segment that I was going to call, "Answers from a Professional," AFP for short.

Then I decided that I like it standing for "Anna for President!" better.

So, welcome to the first installment of AFP! (Anna for President!) where I shall share valuable and effective life advice.

A hot topic for the counseling world is conflict resolution. There are no set steps to healthy conflict resolution, so I have synthesized my own (mostly made-up)  five step list:

1. Take time to calm down and be able to speak from a place of logic and consideration for the other parties.

2. Be able to clearly state the problem and it's impact on you.

3. Hear the other parties thoughts and sides.

4. Brainstorm solutions, often times ones that are a happy compromise.

5. Make and implement an action plan.

But of course just having a list without an illustration is not helpful at all!

Let me set the stage. I was in college, it was 2 am, I was the designated driver in a car full of squawking, ridiculous drunk girls. Said group of girls just HAD to go to Whataburger on the way home.

Like an oasis in the desert

In their defense, it is open 24 hours, and after midnight they put chicken and honey butter on a biscuit.

Glorious

I digress.

Being the full-service driver that I am, we went to Whatburger. Trying to order at the drive through was a mess - "I want that thing with the chicken!" "I want a burger the size of my face!" "I want a number 4, no a number 5, no a number 4!" SQUAWK SQUAWK SQUAWK. Finally, everyone is appeased and I, at the end, order my cheeseburger.

Now understand, I am having ZERO fun at this point. I'm irritated. I'm tired. I'm hungry. I want a cheeseburger. I've EARNED a cheeseburger. All I am living for at the moment is that cheeseburger.

1. Take time to calm down and be able to speak from a place of logic and consideration for the other parties.

We pull up to pay, I've got my eye on the prize, this will all be worth it when I get that glorious cheeseburger. I pay and look at receipt and see that my burger is missing. SQUAWK SQUAWK SQUAWK. "EVERYONE SHUT UP!!!" Breathing deeply through my nose, with all the loud ladies now cowed into silence, I explain to the cashier that I need to pay for my cheeseburger that I added at the end of the order. She swipes my card and we pull up to the next window to get our food.

2. Be able to clearly state the problem and it's impact on you.

As I am grabbing our food, and the noise level is steadily rising in the car again, I look at the girl in the window and say, "is my burger that I paid separately for in here? I really must have this burger. Are you sure? The burger is in here?" Yes, yes, yes of course it is.

3. Hear the other parties thoughts and sides.

In a cloud of assurances from the girl that my burger is in the bag, I pull forward. I stop to hand out all of the food in hopes that it will have a sedative effect on my passengers. I get to the bottom of the bag. No cheeseburger.

4. Brainstorm solutions, often times ones that are a happy compromise.

No cheeseburger. I specifically ordered it. I paid for it separately. I made the lady at the window sign a blood oath that I had it. NO CHEESEBURGER. SQUAWK SQUAWK SQUAWK. I can't sit in the driver through line again with these people. I get out of the car. The front doors are locked. I NEED THAT CHEESEBURGER.

5. Make and implement an action plan.

Obviously, I have to walk up to the drive-through window. Obviously, there is another car there now. Obviously, that is not going to slow me down.

I climbed on top of the hood of the car, waved at the driver, wedged myself between the wall and car, and bang on the window screaming about my cheeseburger.

I got my cheeseburger. Because. Conflict resolution works when you follow my steps.

Need advice? Ask AFP! (Anna for President!) and it could be answered in my next segment!

The Origin of the Term A**hat

I am lucky enough to have met two of my closest friends, Alexis and Anthony, fourteen years ago, almost right after I moved back to the United States.

We were really cool

 

But it's okay, we turned out alright:

 

 

 

But, before we got all growed up and pretty, we were a mess. Okay fine. We are still a mess, we just got better at dressing up.

 

One story in particular sums up our relationship.

 

It was an afternoon during winter break and we were bored. Alexis needed to have her cell phone looked at, so the three of us went to the Verizon store. We were wandering around looking at fancy phones we couldn't afford when it happened. Anthony and I were messing around with a display case and we knocked the whole darn thing over. We're talking crashing, breaking, shrieking, knocked over. We looked at each other, and without a word ran out of the Verizon store, leaving Alexis to deal with the fall-out (hah, see what I did there?) of our mess.

 

Once we were outside, this is the conversation that should have happened:

 

"Oh man, that was really dumb, we should go back inside and deal with the mess we made instead of leaving it with her to clean up."

 

This is the conversation that happened:

 

"Well, that was a mess. Oh! Look! Party City! We should go in."

 

So, Anthony and I ran into Party City without a second thought. And then instead of feeling bad or worrying about our friend we had just heartlessly abandoned, we did this:

 

 

 

 

 

The signs of true friendship: a friend who is always willing to clean up after you and forgives you for running away from responsibility and/or a friend who takes pictures with you in hats at inappropriate times.  

 

 



27 Going on 90 #someonesavemefrommyself

During a conversation with a  friend at work, I had the epiphany that I am way behind the social media times – I don’t tweet or Instagram or Vine or any of that business, because I am apparently a 90 year-old, cranky woman on the inside. Snap Chat is a new (?) thing I know nothing about. Seriously. It might actually be Snapchat. I have no idea. Huh. Spellcheck recognizes Snapchat as a word. Even my word processor is more hip than me. Dang it.

Anyway. Snapchat, from my extraordinarily limited knowledge, is a program where you take a picture of something, send it to a friend, and it pops up on their phone for a few seconds before deleting itself. You can draw on said picture, for example adding hashtags (which I’m also behind on). Apparently it is often used for taking duck-faced selfies and other exciting updates on life. A real life example:

Picture: a young whippersnapper  from our office posing by a pool with a drink (sent to another person at our office). #biztrip.

When I saw it I couldn’t help but think, man, I must be getting old because that is the most ridiculous use of technology I’ve ever heard of. Biztrip. Who says that.

After a conversation regarding that Snapchat and the silliness of young people today with my friends at work (remember, 90 year-old woman here) I could not help but think about what I would Snapchat if I decided that it was a necessary means of communication.

That afternoon I was sitting in the lady doctor’s office, all hiked up, and thought it’d be funny if I could send them the following:

Picture: my knees and hospital gown. #gyntime.

Which then lead me to think that, that is exactly why adults like me shouldn’t Snapchat.

Picture: me in pajama pants on the couch. #realtiredofthingslikepantsandresponsibility.

Picture: summertime electric bill. #cantbeattheheat.

Picture: clock showing 10:30pm. #ughonlygoingtoget7andahalfhoursofsleep.

Picture: the horrible moment when you first look in the mirror in the morning. #thethingsofnightmares.

Needless to say, I will leave the snapchatting (can it even be used as a verb?) to the young and hip while I look for a rocking chair that will fit on my stoop so I can shake my fist and yell at small children. #getoffmylawnyoulittlepunks.  

Anesthesia Brings Out the Best in Me

I have no filter, and that is especially true when I am sick. Turns out I'm a loon when medicine, doctors, or hospitals are involved. And kind of a jerk.

When I was four years old I had pneumonia and the nurse was struggling to get an IV in my arm. I was screaming in Japanese and my parents could not understand what I was saying (one of the many joys of third culture parenting). They asked the nurse what I was saying and all she would say was, "All I feel comfortable repeating is that she is very, very angry."

When I was eight I was in the hospital for an unidentified seizure disorder and I ran around the room screaming, "I love this place! I get to play all day and people always bring me presents! BEST DAY EVER!!"

At thirteen I was told that I would need headgear and I threw a full on, on the floor screaming temper tantrum that I'm pretty sure insulted my dentist's competency and possibly his mother (as a side note I did not ever wear headgear).

At fifteen I had my first colonoscopy and as I was coming out of anesthesia I flung myself off the bed, grabbed the nurse, and screamed, "DO YOU LOVE JESUS?!?" Luckily, she did, because I'm pretty sure my technique needed some refining.

I had my appendix out at sixteen, and fun fact, when you have appendicitis they test for it with a CT scan with contrast. The contrast is not put in your veins, but up your bum. Ick. As I was laying on the table clenching with all my might, I turned to the tech and said, "is this really what you do for a living? I bet you get real tired of butts."

Eighteen years-old, after having a surgery on my leg, I groggily convinced the poor nurse they had operated on the wrong leg. They hadn't.

After I had my tonsils out when I was twenty (I enjoy getting rid of superfluous organs) I was asked what my pain was on a scale from 1 to 10. I hacked and cackled about it not being a 10 because I hadn't broken my femur (five thousand bonus points if you know why I said that) and then got incredibly cranky when no one got my joke.

Last year, I was in the emergency room for an ovarian cyst and a resident walked in (you can tell from the manic, bright-eyed smile and the crappy shoes) and I put my hand up and said "nope. No. Go get a real doctor. Nope. No."

Maybe one day I won't act like a crazy person when I'm at the hospital. But where's the fun in that??

Satan is an a-hole.

Good Friday. A day of darkness and pain, and with our 21st century hindsight, a day that heralds coming victory.

Can you imagine how Mary felt seeing her son not only die, but suffer horribly? How about the disciples? Three years of miracles and hope totally eclipsed by the horror of what was happening to their friend, mentor, leader. Judas? The rising agony as the magnitude of what he has done overwhelms him. Peter? I can only imagine the burning, twisting shame that was filling him. So dark. So painful.

And Satan? I picture him as the oozy guy from Fern Gully, just sucking up all that poisonous, ugly emotion. A buffet of the negative human emotions he thrives on.

I have no idea if he knew the butt kicking that was coming his way, if he knew that his day of "victory" was a joke compared to the victory Christ was about to win over him and death. Friday though, being the self-centered, egotistical jerk that he is, I can imagine him pushing aside that niggling fear that this was too good to be true and wallowing in the negativity like Scrooge McDuck and his money (this is how my brain pictures things, not a theological argument).

As we know, Good Friday is not the end of the story. Christ conquered death. He kicked Satan's butt. Easter marks the most glorious day in history, the day that the break between God and His children was healed by the sacrifice that happened on that painful Friday. There is no image, no cartoon I can reference,  that encompasses the magnitude of the glory of that day.

But for many, they are stuck in their own personal Good Friday. And oh how Satan loves that.

The more I spend time with people, especially people who are hurting and in pain, I've come to believe that Satan particularly loves shame. Not only is there pain or fear or doubt, but shame is the delicious cherry on top for him. 

For the last six months I've been quite the source of fuel for that a-hole. I've been fighting a complex struggle with depression and anxiety. I've had days where I can barely get out of bed. Days where I feel so tired to the core of my being that I can almost count my individual cells. The pressure has gotten so intense in my chest that I imagine the only way to relieve it is to crack my sternum open. I've cried on the floor in the fetal position. I've screamed at the top of my lungs. It has been painful, isolating, and alarming. Satan is having a field day. He loves it. And he really loves the shame I feel about it. Not only does he get to feast on my pain and my hopelessness but he is savoring my embarrassment.

When I try to talk to people about it, he twists their responses so that I feel unloved and "too much" for people. A genuine question that comes from a place of caring, "why do you feel that way," becomes judgmental and condescending. A look of justified alarm becomes condemnation. The love and caring I am surrounded by disappears in a haze of isolation and embarrassment. I can practically hear Satan cackling with glee.  

I'm writing this all out not as a cry of help or for pity. I have wonderful people in my life who are helping me through this. I have a great therapist and doctor, a saint of a husband, amazing friends and family, and I am fighting the good fight. I'm writing about it because I'm tired of the shame surrounding mental health issues, especially in the church. Not only is it unhelpful and unloving to the individuals who are struggling with psychological problems to shame them or ignore these problems, it is a tasty fuel for the enemy. 

On this day of darkness, on a day that the enemy thought he won, I'm screaming back that he most assuredly did not. 

Mental health problems are very real, very painful, and can not be ignored. This is just as true in the Church as out of it. Pretending it is not is gross. If you are struggling and feel shame about it, please, please hear me. You are not broken beyond fixing, your faith is not weak, there is nothing shameful about mental health problems and fighting them. If you are fighting back, that makes my spirit soar. 

On Sunday we celebrate Christ's victory over the grave. That victory extends to all, no matter how dark your Friday feels. 

  

It Starts With a Shimmey and a Shake

**this picture has nothing to do with my story, I just thought the world might need this today.

A few weeks ago I went to get coffee from Dazbog (yeah, I'm name dropping, because if you aren't drinking Dazbog you need to remedy that stat) for myself and two co-workers. I parked right in front of the store because the parking angels were in my favor, got my coffee in it's little carrier tray, and came back out to quite the predicament.
 
A booze delivery truck has parked right next to my car, so close that the driver, who is standing with a clipboard at the sliding door, has his butt on my car and his legs touching the running board step thing on the van.

First thought - GET YOUR BUTT OFF BEATRICE.

Second thought - there is no possible way I can get in my car with him parked there. It's a good thing I excel at confrontation.

"Um. Excuse me?" No response. "Uhhhhh. Sir. Um. Excuse me?" Nothing. "I.... I... Need to get in my car... sir." Nada. "EXCUSE ME I NEED TO GET IN MY CAR SIR!"

I don't think I have ever seen such a dramatic slow turn, eye-roll, deep sigh move in life. He looks at me for what feels like thirty seconds, releases another gut-wrenching deep sigh - "fine." He walks past me, motions with his clipboard to my car, and then folds his arms, waiting.

First thought - what is happening right now? You were the one with your stupid butt on my car and I can't possibly get in her with your stupid van right there.

Second thought - challenge accepted.

And then for good measure I say out loud, "challenge accepted." This is met with another eye-roll.

I wiggle between the two vehicles (the driver is deceptively skinny), put my coffee carrier on the roof of my car, and open the door.

The only way I can start to get in is by wiggling sideways with my arms in the air over the door. Luckily, once my butt is in the car, I have more room to maneuver.

So there I am wedged into my car, with my armpits over the door, a very irritated delivery truck driver watching with his foot tapping, and four Dazbog employees and two patrons standing behind him looking on with equal parts amusement and concern.

I look at all of them, daring them to say something about the sweaty, trapped girl in the mini cooper, completely loss my head and give them all a thumbs up and yell, "this is awesome!"

Awkward silence.

I try to pivot and grab the coffee, but it won't fit in the crack in the door in front of me, so I decide I have to  bring it over my head and bring it in sideways from the back end of the car where the door is open wider.

I'm standing in my wedge with my arms over my head, holding the coffee carrier, when finally one of the observers runs forward yelling, "OH MY GOSH, THAT'S IT, LET ME HELP YOU."

"Yeah, this got away from me."

"Why didn't you just put the coffee in your car from the passenger door and then finagle yourself in?"

"I... I... I have no answer for that."

I get in, he hands me the coffee (from the passenger side, which is wide open), give the driver another thumbs up, and drive off in a cloud of shame and triumph.