Why Me? Embarrassing stories and more
I don’t have much to say this month except that there’s only so much to say because my brain is mush. At least the internet understands the torture that is the month of May now. I’ve seen about a gazillion memes and videos on “Maycember” and the like. So now we all know and instead of attempting to be deep, I am just going to high five you from my whirring computer and say, let’s just be idle for a hot minute.
This is why our Hook theme this month in MommaStrong is not extra though provoking, at least we didn’t intend it to be. We will see what happens by Week 4. This month, Jya and I are going to be joining the 1990s golden era of Seventeen magazine, which contained the saucy section: “Why Me?” This section had “real girls” telling “real stories” of super embarrassing moments.
My memory of this was that basically every single one of them involved a surprise period event and – being a late bloomer – I am happy to report that this entirely made concrete my fear of being a grown up woman. Jya’s memory of this section was that it always involved the phrase “in front of my crush!” She was right. And so was I. Surprise bloodbaths in white pants in front of your crush, to whom you probably just accidentally sent a note about how much you were crushing on him. We did forget about the horror of other bodily fluids and – gasp – exposed thongs.
Please enjoy these fine moments of Seventeen excellence and then join me for one final statement that we shall use to debrief why being a teen in the 90s was actually entirely fucked the fuck up:
First you need to know that I’m in my school’s marching band. Ok, so one time during a football game during whose halftime we performed, everything was going fine until I had to use the bathroom after we marched. The outfit we wear is totally complicated to get in and out of what with the tons of zippers and buttons and snaps and all, so one of my friends came with me to help me get everything undone and done up again. When we left the bathroom we walked around for a while and talked to some friends and after about 30 minutes went back to the bleachers to sit down –right before I sat down a really hot guy turned and said “Hey your fly is down. “But the worst part is I had my band pants on backwards so they were unzipped in the back and I was wearing a thong! So I’d been walking around with my bear butt hanging out!!
-Unzipped,Spokane, WA
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One morning when I was in seventh grade I woke up not really feeling too good but I really wanted to go to school that day because we were getting our class rings! So I sucked it up and went. That morning we had an assembly in our super-small gym so the class rings could be handed out. It was crowded but somehow I managed to snag a seat behind my crush. I just sat there the whole time and as it was getting towards the end of the assembly I was starting to get hot and my stomach started feeling Queasy and just as my class was getting up to receive our rings, I threw up all over my crush!!!
What happened next is pretty much a blur but, let’s put it this way; the next day I was feeling better and I walked into my class and the first thing he said to me was “don’t throw up on me” laughing the whole time! What a jerk. Like I didn’t feel bad enough about it without him teasing me. A few weeks later he decided he liked me but I wouldn’t go out with him because of that little incident!!
-*~tabbatha~* TN
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During lunch one day, my friends and I were fooling around in the lunch line. My friend, Emma, poked my stomach so hard that I wet my pants BIG TIME! My face was bright red, but no one knew that I wet myself. On the bus ride home, someone on the bus yelled, “EWW I SMELL VINEGAR!” Later that day, I told my friend, Emily, that I had an accident, and she fell on the floor laughing. Later we named the wetting of the pants “Niagara Falls”.
– Lauren 14, NJ
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One day in gym class I wore a pair of plaid pajama pants with my gym shorts underneath. My teacher came around to check to make sure we had our gym uniforms on. When he came to me he said “what’s that crap?” he was talking about my pants. To show him I had my gym shorts on I pulled my pj’s down a little, so I thought. It turns out I had shown him my lime green underwear. Boy did my face turn red.
Jeny, NYC
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This past Christmas break I was on a ski trip with my church and my crush was there. Well, we were skiing along and all of a sudden we came up to a really steep run that had an easier option for those who weren’t up to the task. Being the scarred cat that I am, I chose to take the easy way down. We were going along the trail but it was not quite as easy as I had figured. It had a bunch of moguls that I didn’t notice. So I’m skiing along not trying to fall and I inadvertently picked up a BUNCH of speed. All of a sudden I hit this one mogul wrong and my body and my legs fall backward, hitting my crush in the process. It hurt my back so bad but I thought that it had to have hurt my crush worse because it gave him a black eye. Turns out I didn’t hurt him that badly because when we got back from the ski trip he asked me out and we have been dating ever since.
~Anna, NC~
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I’m a freshman in highschool and so far my year has been OK with not too many embarrassing moments to speak of well, except for yesterday when I was in theology class. We always pass notes in that class because my teacher is totally clueless and lets us get away with anything.
My best friend sits behind this total hottie Chris that I’ve been crushing on all year and this one day she was bored so she made up a survey to take just for fun. Most of the questions weren’t that bad but some were a little more daring like she asked which guy I would have make out with if I had to…
Being the stupid me that I am…I wrote down CHRIS as the answer to that one and when I had finished responding to all her questions I threw the survey to her but I threw a little too hard and it landed right in CHRIS’ LAP! I watched him read it and when he came to that question he turned around and gave me a funny look. Then, after class he came up to me and said “I believe this paper belongs to you” and walked away. I’ve never been so mortified in all my life! But I guess it all turned out well in the end because he ended up asking me out! We’ll see how that goes this weekend!
– Anonymous
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Ok, Courtney here again. I mean, WTF? Hahahah. It’s funny but it is also not funny, you know? The basic message now that I time travel back to those tender years was that if any degree of humanness shows up in your behavior, you better be damn grateful that the boy still likes you anyways. Goodness. I am 100% confident this current generation has equal parts – or more – pressure in this same way, however, there’s a special place in misogynistic history for Seventeen magazine in the 1990s.
In any case, please join us for The Hook this month, in which Jya and I will be attempting to tell embarrassing stories. To your delight, most of these involve drinking and/or youthful ignorance. Definitely some bloodbaths and certainly crushes. We plan on keeping it light, because we know we all need it. Nothing to figure out here.
After you register for the Hook, all we encourage you to do is to listen to one short episode of our mini podcast each week, then comment or discuss as you like in our community. OH, and you try to show up for 5-15 minutes of exercise as often as possible during the month.
Ok, now go check your pants. Bye.