THE singular most embarrassing moment of your life?

[OlympicProcrastinator]

You know, the one that pops in to your head at 3am 15 years later and you can still feel the burning shame?

I’ll start. Met a client at work and introduced myself, asked their name. It was a fairly unusual name so began making small talk about it / origins, someone I used to know with same name etc etc. Then….for some reason I just completely forgot what we were talking about and followed it up with, “So anyway, you haven’t told me your name”. Que a look of bemusement then disdain from him as he shook his head and said, “I think you’d better go away now”. It was just so awful. I shuffled off.
I saw him a few weeks later with a friend and he was pointing and laughing at me. That was 20 years ago. I Still cringe.

There was a cracking one on here a few years ago where a woman had gone to a wedding she didn’t like and was slagging it off by text to her husband. Except it wasn’t her husband. She’d accidentally text the bride!! Who promptly told her she was blocked forever.

Anyone care to share theirs?

@ShrikeAttack

It was a cinema experience that was very informative in my young mind. I was at the Saturday Morning cinema with my friends, probably 1979/80. I had a Kiaora and had been chewing the straw which I'd become rather attached to. I was walking along the aisle and it fell out of my mouth into a woman's handbag, I reached down to pick it up and she grabbed my wrist and accused me of trying to get her purse. I gestured towards my straw and picked it up with my other hand and walked off.

I was so outraged by being wrongly accused. To be thought a thief by a woman I'd never met, ME, who went to confession every week. It made me realise that however you behave people make their minds up. I was a middle-class child guilelessly walking out of the cinema. Up until that point I didn't realise that people actually had cynical thoughts about others. It made me realise that not everyone had the same experiences.

And it was that experience that ultimately made me reject the 'Lovely kind' Catholicism that I'd been brought up with. It made me realise that not everyone was like me. Trusting.

It was a very small incident but it had repercussions.

And I realised that if people weren't trusting, there had to be a reason why. It made me think. I did feel shame about that incident, but I knew that shame wasn't really mine. So it lead me to think about shame and what I was really being asked at confession every week.

And I concluded that the shame wasn't mine. I was being asked to confess for mankind. And that wasn't my problem

I felt very free from then on

Very bizarre post. Of course the woman thought you were trying to steal something when you dived into her handbag Using that to reject Catholicism is a link I can't quite follow 🤔

@GreyhoundG1rl

No, nor me.

Two of my male colleagues were complaining about having grey hair (both had good heads of hair but very silver) and I piped up 'don't complain about having grey hair, at least you're not bald' before remembering that the man sat directly in front of me was as bald as a coot. I could have died of shame.

When I was about 16 a guy came up to me at the slow dance section of a local disco. He leaned in and said something to me, which over the noise of the music, I couldn't really hear. I just presumed he was asking me to dance, so I made for the floor. He then said "I wasn't asking you to dance. I just wanted you to hold my pint while I danced with her......"

Cue mortified slink off the floor

Let’s cut Shrike some slack. She’s missed out on the valuable teachings that embarrassment provides us with

It might explain a lot ...

Many of these stories have really made me laugh, so thank you for sharing!

I can do no better than to add another MNetter's embarrassing story that was posted on a similar previous thread. I hope that OP doesn't mind.

She was in a packed doctor's surgery with her small, fractious child. Some of the patients in the waiting room were becoming irritated at the noise the child was making. To lighten the mood, she wanted to say "Oh you whiney tinker". What came out was "Oh you tiny wanker".

I remember this story and smile every time I'm in a waiting room

[quote LobotomisedIceSkatingFan]@GreyhoundG1rl

No, nor me.[/quote]
Yeah, bit of a stretch! That said, any impetus to reject religion is a good ie. in my book.

I was on a train with my friend who had just received bad news at the eye hospital that the loss of sight in one of her eyes might not be treatable. Friend and I both have a dark sense of humour so I was making her laugh by saying that it would be really cool if she got to wear an eye patch, and then threw in a few piratey noises. Conversation moved on and then we later noticed a woman sitting just a few seats away with- yes- an eye patch.

Good one

@Lilyargin

Not me but a friend of a friend (honestly!) On holiday in French alps. All the others went skiing, this man stayed in the chalet. Did a poo in the toilet and it wouldn’t flush. Thought he’d wait a bit and then try again, but the maid came in to clean. Not wanting to leave it there with no explanation he thought he’d try to explain, except he spoke no French, so he beckoned her over, lifted the lid, pointed at the turd and then proceeded to flush the toilet to show it wasn’t working. It flushed.

🤣 Reminds me of this

I imagine it probably WAS that. Clue is in “friend of a friend”…

[quote PeridotPenelope]@EishetChayil Embarrassment is a natural human response to situations. There’s no shame in it. The only people I can think of who don’t feel shame are psychopaths.

I have loads but they are very outing. I have genuflected in the cinema aisle, burst in late to a wedding ceremony using huge old church doors which were no longer in use (in my haste I missed the modern entrance). Made the most awful noise just as the Vicar was asking about any impediment why the couple were not free to marry. Everyone laughed…[/quote]
I've read that too. Absence of social emotions such as embarrassment being one of the criteria for psychopathy.

I was a very naive 16 year old and took an entrance test for computer programming training I only did it because my friend wanted someone with her.

So I passed the aptitude test and was invited for interview. Friend failed.

I turned up in total ignorance and no idea what was expected at all and the room was full of university graduates. I stuck out like a sore thumb as I looked about 12.

Nice fatherly interviewer chatted to me. All over my head, and then I started rambling on about how I had knitted my own interview jumper. Interviewer looked even more confused than I was.

Cringe still!

I had just moved to the Netherlands and hardly knew any Dutch. I was at work, when a lorry driver walked up and started talking to me. I didn’t catch a word he said, so assumed he was speaking Dutch.

I said, “I’m sorry, do you speak English?”. He looked outraged, then replied, “AH AM SPAKING ENGLISH!” He was Scottish, oops. I apologised and ran away, and then heard him stomping around the warehouse complaining about me, “AND AH SID, ‘AH AM SPAKING ENGLISH!’”

A friend also had an embarrassing misunderstanding with a Scot, although it was nothing to do with accents. My friend was walking around an unfamiliar part of Glasgow, looking for the address where he had a job interview.

A woman in skimpy clothing was leaning in a shop doorway. She called out to him, “are you looking for some company?” He thought she was a prostitute and replied, “OH NO! NO!” The woman looked shocked and my friend realised that she was merely offering to help him find the company address he was looking for.

@3ormorecharacters

I was that person who fails to correctly lock the door in one of those train toilets with the big, slow-opening automatic door. I was mid-wee and it started its slow reveal to a corridor full of people. Mortifying.

I think I was one of those people in the corridor... I'd forgotten all about it until you reminded me!

Not mine, but one from a previous thread that makes me cackle without fail is the poster who somehow sucked her dentist's finger 🤣🤣

My worst cringe moment was as a teenager when I phoned my friend at home. Her sister answered and said she wasn't in, only, she sounded EXACTLY like my friend on the phone. I was like "riiiiiight, ok, she's 'not in', are you suuuure?" thinking it was my friend joking around, proceeded to chat random crap about school for a good 5 minutes before realising that of course it wasn't my friend because who would do that?!

I was mortified and now in my 30s still get cold sweats at the prospect of making phone calls.

A woman came into work asking for an application form - chatty me asked her about herself & where she’s worked before…factory X was her answer.
Oh, I’ve a cousin who works there but we’re not in touch, not with the family, not with that whole side of the family Oh Lordy No, just bonkers the lot of them … no you know her her name is B ?

‘Yes that’s my daughter’.

I was talking to my Aunt.

Here's a couple of many... Went to the doctors when I was heavily pregnant, it was a busy morning surgery and the waiting room was completely rammed. I gradually became aware of a uncomfortable feeling, then realised to my horror that my waterbottle had leaked in my bag, which I was holding on the seat, and then it had all seeped out till I was sitting in a big puddle which had soaked right through to my pants, bum and crotch. I then had to decide, do I try to hide it (impossible as I was dripping and elbow to elbow with other people) or try and make a big thing of "oh no my water has leaked everywhere oops!" which I did, but pretty sure everyone thought the pregnant lady had p###ed herself all over the chair! 🤣 Another gem..I took my toddler DD to the park, and had a lovely time holding her on my lap to go down slide/swings etc. I kept smelling dog poo, and after checking shoes/buggy/toddler over and over, I gave up and we walked a long way home through the busy town centre. It was only when I got home and could still smell it REALLY badly, that I realised that some little sh#t must have covered the swing in dog poo, and I had sat in a load of it before walking home with a sh#t covered arse! 🙈

@waterlego

I was on a train with my friend who had just received bad news at the eye hospital that the loss of sight in one of her eyes might not be treatable. Friend and I both have a dark sense of humour so I was making her laugh by saying that it would be really cool if she got to wear an eye patch, and then threw in a few piratey noises. Conversation moved on and then we later noticed a woman sitting just a few seats away with- yes- an eye patch.

Oh god, DH made ape noises on a bus because I showed him a picture of a newly born gorilla at Bristol Zoo. There was a black person sitting behind us

(Before anyone jumps on me, no, of course I don't think that anyone should associate black people with apes. I also don't think black people are too daft to tell the difference between racism and talking about apes when they know the context. But I am well aware that racist twats make monkey noises at black people, throw bananas at black football players etc. So I was mortified in case the other passenger thought we were doing something similar, given that he didn't know us and given that there was no obvious reason for DH suddenly to break into an ape impression. From the other passenger's viewpoint, DH suddenly started doing ape noises for no reason at all)

We were staying in an apartment with my brother and his wife. I opened the door to the en suite, only to realise that there was another door into it from their bedroom, and my brother was stark naked, about to get in the shower.

The first guy in the op sounds really rude, and the op sounds fine (innocent harmless lapse of thought for a second). He should be embarrassed - not the op!

Back at university, I'd been drinking white wine with friends in the park on a scorching hot day. I remember stumbling back to my shared house extremely drunk and wanting a shower before bed.

My next recollection is waking up the next morning beside my boyfriend who was staring at me like I had three heads. Apparently, after showering I decided I was going to bed, only I stumbled into the wrong bedroom and got into my housemate's bed completely naked. A vague recollection came to me of curling up at the foot of the bed and thinking there wasn't as much space as usual. This was in fact because there were two people already occupying the bed and I had interrupted them having sex. To make matters even more confusing, it wasn't even my housemate in the bed, it was his ex-girlfriend and my boyfriend's best mate who didn't even live in the house (long story) They shouted for my boyfriend who untangled me from the bed and gave me a fireman's lift into the correct room.

This was 22 years ago and it still haunts me. As much as I protested my innocence, no one believed that I wasn't after a threesome.

I have two which regularly pop into my head and make me wish turning the clock back was a thing! The first was making a remark about 'Hooray Henrys' to a friend whose son was called Henry. The second was discussing privileged families with another friend and saying blithely "oh you know the type, 'Mr. and Mrs. Double-Barrelled'", temporarily oblivious to the fact that her surname was in fact double-barrelled.
(Tbf, although it's a reprehensible stereotype, her family is quite privileged!)

@blackfriars

I never used to understand that when spelling something out and using the words universally known for each letter (is it the NASA alphabet or something?) that everyone used the same words - I.e. C = Charlie - and it was a ‘thing’. I thought you just used any word that sprang to mind. So I’d always be on the phone to the bank or my phone provider or whoever, spelling out my postcode ‘S for swashbuckle, H for hippopotamus, N for nice to see you’ and be so confused as to why the other person on the end of the phone was laughing....

This reminds me that I was once on the phone to someone official, tried to be cool by using the nato alphabet but like you was adding "for ...". So not just "alpha hotel" or whatever but "A for alpha, H for hotel". As always I was slightly concerned that I might forget one, but all went fine until I had to do Y, at which point I said "Y for wanky". Twice.

2 days after i got my driving license i had to park in a pretty narrow sideways bay on a hill.
It was horrible, i just couldnt do it
I tried and tried, people stopped to watch.
In the end i gave up, got out of the car and asked someone for help! He couldnt stop laughing