1. to humiliate or shame, as by injury to one's pride or self-respect.
2. to subjugate (the body, passions, etc.) by abstinence, ascetic discipline, or self-inflicted suffering.
3. Pathology. to affect with gangrene or necrosis.I have had a handful of moments in my existence that I would qualify as mortifying. Though, I use the word for more than these specific events that it applies to. Fact of the matter is, if something is truly mortifying, you find that even looking back on it years later it still makes you feel like you want to crawl out of your skin. Well, one of these mortifying things happened to me this weekend. And after it happened I swore to myself I would never tell a single soul. I was so mortified I vowed to take it to the grave only revealing it (maybe) to my future husband on my deathbed. Then I though about it, I thought about it over and over again. It occurred to me that there is some serious entertainment value in the mortifying things that have happened to me. And if I am brave enough to tell everyone about them, maybe over time they will feel less mortifying. In the very least, maybe you will read one of these and be like "man, thank GOD that never happened to me." In which case, that's good enough for me too.
Without further explanation, and for your own personal enjoyment, I now present the top 4 mortifying events of my entire life.
7th Grade. 1999.
It was a passing period, just the tail end of it. I was still pretty new to my Jr. High having just moved there that year. It was a hard transition for me because the elementary school I went to was K-8th. So I had had the same classmates forever. I started school in one building when I was 5 - and didn't have to navigate myself through a new school at any point. Coming into a Jr. High that started in 6th grade, already had me at a disadvantage because everyone else had had a year to familiarize themselves with the layout of the school. I was lost all the time. At least I could fall back on my good looks, right? Wrong. I was hideous.
So there I was with my half-mullet and my perfectly round gold framed glasses (if only Harry Potter became cool 5 years earlier...) just trying to gather my books for my next class and then figure out where exactly that class was. Somewhere between bundling my books and closing my locker door, two 7th grade boys approached me and started teasing me, calling me a dog. I was not a very confrontational kid, so I did what anyone would do, kept my head down and kept walking to where I thought my next class was. But these kids were relentless. They thought I was a dog, and they wanted me to know about it. I picked up my speed as they followed closely behind me barking, literally barking at me, sporadically interjecting that they were barking because I was a dog. Yep, thanks guys, got that.
The fast walk, turned into a jog, which turned into a sprint to my next class. These two boys behind me the whole way. By the time I had gotten to the right room, most of the 7th grade had watched this happen and would reference this moment for weeks to come. Needless to say, mortified.
Senior Year. 2005.
It's never been a secret that I became a little slutty at a young age. Since about 14 years old I have found the very little self esteem I have from the validation of men wanting to bed me. Not something I am proud of, and one of the many things I have been working on in therapy. But at this point in my life, at the ripe old age of 17, I didn't even know it was wrong. What I did know was that I was spending a lot of time with older men in the Chicago rock scene. And these men a. didn't know I was only 17 and b. were used to really slutty groupies that would do anything to steal a moment of their attention.
Since I was receiving attention from these men, I had to compete with gorgeous 20something girls who had the time, money, and IDs to seduce these men in bars after shows when they are good and drunk. All I had was my parent's basement and a digital camera. So, some pictures were taken. Some really inappropriate illegal pictures. I had sent them to a handful of men I was attempting to win over, and made the silly mistake of leaving them on the family computer. One day when I had gotten home from school my mother asked me to take a ride with her. This was the first red flag that something was wrong. She took us to the Oswego Park District parking lot where she confronted me about finding them, and explained how awful it was that I even took them nonetheless sent them to strange old men. She was right. But I was mortified.
New Year's Eve. 2006.
Taking the last story into consideration, I found myself at a friend's family friend's NYE party the winter after I had left college. I was 19 now, but clearly my judgement hadn't improved much over those 2 years. At this house party, there were people every where. Lots of adults with kids, some grungy teenagers drinking heavily behind the house, and a group of old biker dudes showing off their motorcycles in the driveway (this was also the first time I was ever on a motorcycle...on December 31st). I scanned the party for the first half of the night checking out the prospects for my midnight kiss. So far the position was going to be filled by my gay friend Paul.
After one two many beers in the garage, and strangers filtering in and out for drinking and dancing, I met an older man who seemed to be very into me. And I seemed to be very into being drunk and looking for a make out buddy. We were a match made in drunken holiday heaven. It was getting closer to midnight and we found ourselves alone in the garage, he made the move, he leaned in, and we kissed. A little kissing turned into a lot of kissing. It was a full blown makeout session before I realized more people had entered the garage as well. Turns out, those people were his wife and 2 small children.
For a very long time I never told anyone this story, other than discussing it with my one girlfriend who was there that night. This is one of the harder stories of mine for me to swallow because my stupid decisions didn't only affect me that night. And I try to consider that I was 19, and at that point didn't think to look for a wedding ring. And really, fuck that guy - he's skeezy as shit. What makes this story mortifying was that I spent the first half of the evening dancing with these 2 little kids. Dancing with them, spinning them through the air, showing them how to do the twist. They were my little buddies, and they adored me, probably until they heard what their mother said about me on the ride home. Mortified.
November 12th. 2011.
My friend had asked me to be a plus one at a wedding he was attending. I didn't know anything about the wedding other than that there would be a limo at my house at 3pm to take me where I needed to be. I put on a pretty black dress, and some fancy dancing shoes, and let my limo take me away to the most beautiful wedding I have ever seen in my whole entire life. The ceremony was at a cathedral on State and Erie in the city, and following the vows everyone was charter bussed over to the Peninsula Hotel for a reception in the Grand Ballroom. First of all, holy shit beautiful hotel. It looked like Nate Berkus had designed the ballroom from top to bottom, from every beautiful center piece to the perfectly crafted nameplates and menus. I was in awe that a wedding could be so breathtaking.
I took my seat and made small talk with the other guests at my table. I was at one of those younger tables wedding couples through together since they don't fit in any where else with the older friends and family. And though I was at the young table, I was still 10 years behind everyone else. So I played extra cool, used my best manners, and paid very close attention to which fork I was using. After a few minutes the wedding party headed in, one couple at a time. Once the bride and groom were in sight I stopped with everyone else to raise my glass of champagne and toast the beautiful couple. Out of the corner of my eye, as I stood up, I noticed a gigantic blood stain atop the white linen covered chair I was sitting in. Oh hey period blood - could your timing be any worse?
I was quick on my feet, given my complete and total horror. I pushed the chair into the table, covered with my napkin, and ran to the bathroom to calculate my next move. I choked backed tears in the stall of the ladies room, and strongly considered running out the door and not answering my dates phone calls for the next 5-10 years. Instead, I cleaned up, went back to the table to sit over the spot until the next morning when everyone was sure to have left. But to my surprise when I had gotten back to the table, a new chair was in it's place, a new linen folded nicely sitting on my dinner plate and no one had said a word about it for the rest of the night. It took a few cocktails to get my heart rate back down, but by the end of the night it was as if it never happened. But I will never forget the shear mortification of that moment.
So there they are. In all their glory. The top 4.
I racked my brain for a 5th, just because a list of 5 sounds better than one of 4. But I think I have relived enough embarrassment for one day. I am sure 100 more terribly mortifying things will happen between now and the day I die. But in 24 years, this is hands down the worst of it.
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