As you can see from the photo above, I wasn’t the coolest kid on the block in elementary school. And that photo is really me at my best. Sans huge glasses.

I only had a few friends in elementary school – yeah, my friend group was small. And I was made fun of a lot. I’ve alluded to some of the bullying I went through in my younger days, and I won’t go into all that here, but needless to say, I was tormented.

I also had a propensity for doing a lot of embarrassing things. Heck, I still have a propensity for doing embarrassing things. 99% of the time I’m ignorant to the fact that said embarrassing moment is even happening.

I feel like everyone has that one embarrassing moment that happened to them as a kid that will stay with them forever. And I’m going to tell you about that moment.

It was 5th grade. I was in Mrs. Fleming’s class and we were going on a field trip to the Kennedy Center in Washington D.C. So, since we were going on a field trip to such a fancy place, we all had to dress up.

I didn’t have the nicest clothes or anything and I was a tomboy so dressing up was not my thing. And I hadn’t worn stockings or tights in forever.

I was wearing a velvet skirt, a white blouse, black shoes, and black stockings. We were at school getting ready to load the bus to the Kennedy Center and our teacher encouraged us to go to the bathroom. Me, having had bad luck with not going to the bathroom before field trips before, hurried my tush over to the ladies room.

I went, did my business, and went about my merry way and loaded the bus.

30 minutes later, we arrived at the Kennedy Center, we got off, we began doing the whole tour thing, and whatnot. Now, while all this had been going on, I heard a whole lot of snickering behind me. Probably for a good, I don’t know, hour or two. But, again, snickering in my presence was not uncommon.

After watching whatever highfalutin’ show we were there to see, we headed to a nearby park for lunch.

I remember sitting alone at a picnic table munching on my PB&J and Dunkaroos looking over at the table of cool kids wishing I could eat with them. I quickly brushed off the feelings and had to go to the bathroom. So I got up and headed over to the building where the facilities were located, walked into the bathroom, passed the mirror on my way to the stall, caught a glimpse of myself, and did a double take. I stopped in my tracks.

Suddenly I realized why they’d been snickering for the last five hours.

My velvet skirt was tucked into the back of my K-mart stockings revealing my Marvin the Martian underwear for all the world to see.

I fell to the ground. I was so embarrassed. Suddenly my brain was going over all the scenarios I had been in over the last five hours and I was quickly losing count as to the amount of people that saw my underwear.

I cried. Hard. And then I just got mad. Why did NO ONE bring this to my attention? Not even a teacher?!?!?!

I didn’t want to leave the bathroom. I wanted to stay in there forever. Quickly, I gathered myself together and walked out to more and more snickers – my classmates now realizing that I’d realized what had happened. I made some joke, I don’t even really remember what it was, but humor was (and still is) my defense mechanism of choice.

I remember getting home that night and telling my mom and dad about it and then asking to get transferred to another school. They denied my request, behind their own chuckles, naturally.

The truth is, to this day, whenever I’m wearing stockings / tights whatever, I ALWAYS check to make sure my skirt isn’t tucked into the back. I’m paranoid. Scarred for life.

What about you? Have you ever experienced an embarrassing moment that will stay with you forever?