Everyone has been embarrassed at one time or another. It is that moment
in time when you wish the earth would open up and swallow you. The
anxiety and discomfort felt during that time which may only last a few
seconds feels like time has stood still.
I remember so well when I had my most embarrassing
moment. I was in Form 4 and it was during the school recess. The minute
the bell rang for recess, I rushed to the toilet because I had been
controlling my urges since class started. I didn’t want to miss class
because the lesson taught that morning was to include tips for the
forthcoming examination.
Without realising, I had rushed to the girls’ toilet.
The prolonged control and an upset stomach made worse by two glasses of
cold milk in the morning made me grunt and groan in what I thought in
what I thought was the privacy of the cubicle. I thought I heard
giggling outside and wondered why the giggles sounded unusually near. A
few minutes later I came out the cubicle and discovered my horror that I
had entered the girls’ toilet. To make matters worse, the few girls
standing outside didn’t even turn away when I came out. Instead they
looked down at me, then only they turned quickly away. Horror of
horrors, I had forgotten to zip up! No beetroot could have matched the
colour of my face at this point in time!
They news of my predicament spread like wild fire
throughout school. I was truly the talk of the town. I felt like I could
either walk around feeling perpetually self-conscious and embarrassed
or I could turn the situation round, perhaps even to my advantage. I
remembered my mother’s words that ‘if you can’t beat them, join them’.
So I decided to make fun of myself, to laugh at myself too. It works.
Everyone got bored after a while and nobody teased me after that.
It was indeed an eye-opening experience for me. I have
learnt that when people laugh at you, you should laugh along. You must
not take yourself seriously. Learn to look at yourself through other
people’s eyes and you will realise that most of the time when they laugh
at you, they just want to have some fun. They mean no harm. If you can
make people laugh, it’s like bringing sunshine into their lives and as
someone said, ‘those who bring sunshine to the lives of others cannot
keep it from themselves.’
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