SUPER-Embarrassing Moment #5: Oh Crap.

The Year: 1989….

It was a time to rejoice, feast, and drape ourselves in richly-coloured silks…

It was a time for an Indian Wedding .

The princess was my aunt, and the prince…well…he was some dude who had recently arrived on a sugar-cane boat (hurray for marrying immigrants you’ve never met! )

Now this was my very first wedding (Indian or otherwise), so you can totally imagine my excitement.

My mom was the one who was planning the “Arranged Parade”, so I found myself right in the thick of it.

As you may or may not know, Indian weddings are known for the FOOD. Seriously, brown people know their stuff.  It’s not even the food at the reception that makes the event. If anything, it’s the night-time feasts leading UP to the wedding day…that’s what the people remember.

And for me (the round-bellied girl with excessive saliva), it was ALL ABOUT the food.

Our “night-before-the-wedding-feast” was lavish. I mean obviously there was a “party” happening around the food, but you coulda fooled me. I couldn’t even hear the music, or see the people, or feel the “old-lady hugs”…

Instead, I was overwhelmed with a single thought:

food + belly = HAPPY

The entire event was nothing more than my very own deep-fried, syrupy, pistachio-filled playground.

Magnificent .

For most of the evening, I was eating up a storm and dancing on a cloud.

At some point in the night, I must’ve O.D.-ed on all the food, ’cause I awoke the next day in a state of “confused user”.  I found myself curled up in a ball on the floor, knee-deep in crumbs and damp from all the “calorie-sweat”. 

As I finally tried to get up, I stopped for a moment and listened: my stomach was rumbling fiercely, what was it trying to tell me?

Before it could even answer, I felt something…

SOMETHING was hurdling down the chute.

UH-OH…..

I raced to the bathroom “Canadian drugged-up-sprinter”-style, breaking my own world record, and arriving just in time.

Do you need any further detail??? Shudder…

I certainly would have liked to solve my ”issue” with some meds (or a diaper for 8-year olds), but it was already time for the wedding!

Sooo…even though I was dripping with sweat, I managed to wrap myself in layer-upon-layer of (seductive) silk, and I forced myself to the ceremony (is it wrong to refer to an 8-year-old as seductive?).

Now the thing about weddings (whether Indian or not), is that you pretty much have to watch attentively, and also shut the hell up.

And to add a little colour to the Indian affair, everyone sits on the floor, positioning themselves in a big human maze.

So basically there was no getting out of that place.

This was a MAJOR problem, since ”crap attack” #2 was well on its way.

After a few vain attempts to “hold it in”, I was out of luck.

Do I even have to go any further, or is that quite enough in the “imagery” department?

Well…I already brought you halfway here, so why not continue?

Okay

……

So basically I crapped my pants (and not “logs’ mind you, but more like the liquidy-diarrhea stuff (I KNOW, wtf? I’m wanting to puke as I write this…)).

Now don’t be fooled, I didn’t have a big ol’ sac of “liquid-crap” in my undies, but the damage was pretty apparent.

This was a tough situation, and not just in the sense of sitting in a warm bowl of “poo-stew”.  What I mean is, I’m sure all the people around me could smell it…right?

RIGHT.

In order to avert the ”stink bomb blame”, I had to think fast.

So like a crafty con-man, I immediately “turned that shit around” (no pun intended), by pointing to a DAMN ugly baby: “ewwww, gross smelly baby!“ I exclaimed, in my innocent 8-yr old voice. 

The trickery worked like a charm, ’cause it’s universially known that ugly babies have the smelliest poo (same goes for ugly adults).

So with the smell-crisis over, the ceremony finally ended. 

At this point I was thinking “yo, what’s next?”

I had to clean up all the “poo stew”, so I hobbled on over to the women’s public bathroom.

I didn’t really know what to do once I got there…

I couldn’t tell my mom that I was walking around with crap-filled undies, ’cause it surely would’ve ruined the “big day”.

So I kinda just hung around, all confused-like, for about…20 minutes (I guess I should’ve cleaned myself up, but the mess was way too big for me to handle on my own). 

After what seemed like 20 hours, a friend of my mom’s came into the bathroom.  She took one look at my “soiled derriere”, and responded with shock and disgust.

Quickly though, her “it doesn’t matter if you are gross and damaged, I’ll look after you” maternal instincts kicked in (phew!). 

Needless to say, she dropped my pants and undies, and cleaned me the fuck up.

But here’s a problem: I was now in a public bathroom with no pants or underwear.

What next?

Well like a true embarrassing spectacle, my mom’s friend “called for reinforcements”.

They raced right home to get me another outfit.

As I waited for my new set of clothes, I basically crapped my ass off (only now I was in the right place at the right time).

Other than that, I just sat in a corner of the public bathroom, stick-legs shivering, bum-crack raw from all the wiping.

When the reinforcements finally returned with my outfit, 10 or 12 people followed them in (you can call them ”curious bystanders”, but I’m gonna call them assholes..)

As word of  my “accident” spread, my mom had suddenly arrived, sporting her meanest “I’m gonna slap the teeth out of you” face.  Luckily for me, she was way too busy with the wedding details to deliver the actual slap.

Instead, she just re-told the story about A MILLION times afterwards (i.e. “I TOLD her not to eat so much!”)).

Fast forward to today, and anytime someone in my family poos their pants (a couple times a year), my mom will bust out the tale once again (and that’s exactly how I wanted to be immortalized…Sure…)

And so….what’s the moral of the story, this last in my ”Embarrassing” series?

Well it’s simple:  Indian food is a two-faced whore, so be careful (and for the love of God use protection)

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On a completely different note, wonderful Red gave me an award this week (yes, she feels that I’m bodacious )

I was SO flattered, and in an effort to pass along the goodness, I’ve identified two bodacious bloggers on my ‘roll who MUST be named.

Like me, these two chicks are Canadian, but more different from one another they could not be.  Despite the contrast, each makes me laugh in her own special way. 

Their writing speaks volumes of their wicked personalities, and I hope they keep it up in ’08.

So here they are, my bodacious bloggers:

Greenie at “Christmas Time in the Emerald City”

Talea at “No Really, It’s Just My Face”

SUPER-Embarrassing Moment #4: Role Model Madness

Who did you idolize when you were a kid?

Your parents?

Your older brother?

Michael Jackson? (wtf)

I’ve idolized a lot of of different people, and continue to do so today.

As much as we grow and evolve though, nothing beats that very first role-model; you know, the one who makes you think “Holy crap, I could really be so much more“.

And when did Romi meet her very first role-model?

It happened at the age of “eight”, and MY GOD was it ever magical…

***

2nd grade was pretty alright.

I kicked butt at math,  my pig nose was growing out (a little), and I knew how to spell like nobody’s business.

Pretty alright.

Things got a whole lot better one day, when our teacher announced that we’d be getting a “French assistant”.

I wasn’t sure what to expect, when suddenly, in walked “Madmoiselle”.

She was like…WOW.

Like seriously, I was NOT used to seeing such beautiful women close-up (no offense mom), but this one had it all: big brown frizzy hair (shut up, it was the 80′s and perms were a big deal), gallons of flowery perfume, shoulder-padded dresses in every colour of the rainbow, and cheeks full of blush (3 to 5 layers, from what I could gather).

It was astounding to see such a beautiful creature, and I’ll tell you why: for the first time in my life, I felt the urge to be more good-looking than my natural state would indicate.  They call that ”society’s dream for every damn woman in the Westernized World“, and suddenly I had my first taste…

After observing Madmoiselle and her beauty all week long, I decided it was time to jack-up my own ”wow-factor”.

I noticed that Madmoiselle had the brightest PINKEST nails in all the land.  I wasn’t allowed to wear nail polish (well duh, I was 8), so I went for the back-up: my package of felt-tipped markers. I chose the colour “magenta”, and began to paint my nails in a maddening frenzy.

When i showed Madmoiselle my handi-work, she was SO impressed!   She even went on to tell me I was pretty…omg, ME the 8-yr-old math-nerd, PRETTY!!!…Awesome .  As a minor set-back to my burgeoning beauty, I realized that magenta marker doesn’t wash off (crap), so my mom would totally see it (oh God).  Luckily it was the 80′s, so I put on my “MJ gloves” at the dinner table, and nobody even flinched (phew…).

I tried out some other things to be more like Madmoiselle:

-I noticed that she had the most ivory-whitest face I’d ever seen (a likely by-product of being a white chick).  I started to associate “white face” with beauty, so while at home one night, I took a container of baby powder, and doused myself with the cakey substance.  By the time I was through, I looked less like a beautiful white-chick, and more like a messed-up wannabe-Geisha from Calcutta…

-Now I LOVED the smell of her flowery perfume, but I didn’t have any…what to do? I looked around the bathroom, and ”problem solved” (in other words, I sprayed aerosol air freshener ALL over myself, and also rubbed some potpurri behind my ears and in my armpits (and so they called me “Lilac Romi“…)

Now you’re probably thinking “Why did you wanna be like her so bad? Were you lesbian-crushing on her? Were you trying to be her, in hopes of taking over her life?“

ANSWERS: NO, I was NOT an 8 year-old horny lesbian, and NO this was not a scene from The Hand That Rocks the Cradle (though if it was, my behaviour would have been quickly followed by wanting to “get wit her man”, wanting to breast-feed her child, and then wanting to murder her ass (PS: if you haven’t seen the movie and I just ruined it for you, I am NOT sorry, ’cause the movie’s from 1992, and you’ve had plenty of time to watch it…losers…)).

The truth is, I was obsessed with her because she made me feel…special.  Like she would always commend me on my excellent spelling, and not a day went by where I didn’t impress her with my “add & subtract” prowess. She told me that if I studied hard, I could be anything I wanted.   In short: she was a mentor, a role-model, and a friend; why wouldn’t I wanna to be her?

Sadly though, this love-fest couldn’t last.  That’s right, it was time for her to move on, and go to a different school .

I was CRUSHED, but I had ONE last day to make her remember me. 

Our teacher had said that we could get her a “goodbye present”, and THAT’s what sealed it: I was going to make her the best damn present EVER .

I stayed up ’till 3am that night, crafting a gift that she would never forget.

I arrived in class the next day, with my present carefully hidden in the bottom of my bag.  As I started to look around, my heart stopped, and immediately fell to the floor. 

EVERY kid in the class was cradling a “store bought” present.  From gift baskets, to chocolates, to golf clubs, these rug-rats had gone all out.

And then there was ME, with a lined-paper picture book fastened together with staples, outlining our time together, written and drawn in basic blue ink.

I had COMPLETELY forgotten that kids have cash-wielding parents who aim to please, but had instead assumed that everyone would make a gift.

So like a true idiot, I sat at my desk huddled over, sobbing into my blue-ink picture book, smudging the pictures with my juicy tears.  Meanwhile the kids had crowded around Madmoiselle, to shower her with store-bought gifts.

Once the “present-orgy” was over, Madmoiselle took notice of my blubbering (the classroom had vaulted ceilings, making for a hell of an echo).  She walked right over to my desk, and asked if I would show her my present.  I refused, but eventually she pried it free (damn my under-developed kung-fu grip!).

She flipped through all the pages, smiling and laughing.  She gave me a hug, and told me it was the most thoughtful gift she had ever received. 

It was a beautiful moment…a moment that was quickly erased, by the fact that 20 kids had just witnessed it all.

I spent the next 6 months getting beat-up for the following:

A: being an 8-year old lesbo

B: Crying in front of the whole class

and C: Making a lame-ass home-made present

Was it worth it?

Only me and Madmoiselle know the answer to that…

SUPER-Embarrassing Moment #3 (conclusion): Fools Rush In…

Well hello again!

Before I begin another love-themed post, do me a favour and click on the Elvis song; seriously, I DEMAND that you have a soundtrack!

 

Now for those of you unfamiliar with ”Part 1″ of my “embarrassing brush with love”, here you go. 

And for those of you who joined me last time, here’s a refresher on the “set-up”:

-I was 12 and I developed a crush on a man-boy (a delicious one at that)

-I accidentally touched his sleeve, and became all “weak in the vagina”

-I decided I loved him

-I found out he had a big-boobed girlfriend (fuck!), became all sad, but then became determined, resolving to “blossom” with time.

(And then some time passed by…)

***

 With 2 years of ”growing” behind me, I had changed in a lot of different ways:

-My hair was really long, and I had this idea that “flippy-ass” hair was sexy….??? (Is it relevant to note that my hair was also greasy and knotted?)

-I had started wearing flannel shirts (that I had begged my parents to buy me for $10 a piece), because Nirvana and other “grunge-acts” were cool at the time; I thought I’d look hip and sexy as a fan (another slam dunk)…

-In addition to not wearing make-up (as mentioned before), I had not yet discovered the benefits of plucking my eyebrows…on a positive note, maybe the un-plucked version made me look more mysterious (oooh) and dramatic (ahhh)??? (am I reaching here?…am I?)

-I still didn’t have any boobs, and I couldn’t ask mom for a padded bra, because hellllooo, bras are for sluts who have unprotected sex (another one of my mom’s firm beliefs; I think she should write a book).  Sadly then, I was bra-less and FLAT (side-note: it’s 2007, and though I’m not too far from a flat-chested state, there’ve been remarkable advancements in bras; these days, I wave around my big ol’ holographic knockers, and the men on the subway LOVE it ). 

So yeah, that’s what I looked like at age 14.  You’re probably thinking, “Oh god, I hope she didn’t try to hump him, not while she looked like that“, but hey, I had some good points too!  Seriously, check it out:

A: He has just broken up with his big-boobed girlfriend (she was forced to get a breast-reduction due to back problems)
B: He and I were now friends, laughing and joking every day (and we all know what that means right? Don’t you? No? Well FINE, I’ll spell it out for you: “girls with good personalities ALWAYS win… “ )

It was time to make my move.

Since we were only 14, the best plan I had was the ”pass a note and ask him out” type-thing.  I had this one friend who was ALL about “helping me out”.  Though she wasn’t my best-est friend by any means, she seemed real excited to lend a hand (at the time, I thought she was my biggest fan, but in hind-sight, she may have been looking for a show…).

So I let my friend write the note, and here is a re-creation (and no Jeff is NOT his real name…)

Now WHY it seemed like a good idea to ask BOTH questions in an “all or nothing” approach is beyond me, but it seemed like a good idea at the time.

So my friend went ahead and passed him the note in French class (come on baby, it’s French class, the perfect romantic setting! ).

I sat in the back well away from them both, pretending I couldn’t see.

Of course I observed every detail, and here’s what I saw: he read it, his face turned all red (good sign?), he wrote down an answer, and passed back the note.

My friend read the note, put it away, and didn’t even look at me once (uh-oh, bad fucking sign right?).

After class, she took me aside and read me his answers:

Oh.

After finding out the answer, I felt like the ugliest, most retarded fucking loser in the world.

The worst part was, I had 3 or 4 classes with this guy! From that day on, I couldn’t even look him in the eye; I even stopped answering questions in class (which was very unnatural for a brown nerd like me).   In addition to losing my intellectual spirit, I stopped washing my hair, my feet, and my ears (everything else was fine, but those three things went on a “wash strike”, for maybe the next 3 years…)

This story may not seem like an obvious form of embarrassment (like when the bucket of pig’s blood landed on “Carrie” ), but it was more like a prolonged, gutting humiliation, the kind that lasts for a lifetime. 

And listen, all sarcasm aside, this brown chick’s heart got a little bit hurt. I mean yeah, maybe I grew up, and maybe I stopped looking like a greasy long-haired dude, but for AGES I was insecure, wondering if I’d ever be worthy of a date. 

And sure, I may have only been a kid, but when I was “in it”, those were some “be all and end all” feelings, hell fucking yeah…

I think that’s why the embarrassment stands out like a stick in the mud…you never forget your first crush, and you NEVER forget your very first rejection (or the 10 or 15 that follow it…I mean…uhhh….shut up).

SUPER-Embarrassing Moment #3: Only Fools Rush In…

I preface this entry with all things ”LOVE“.

As I write this, I’m listening to my future wedding song, i.e. “Can’t Help Falling In Love” (and of course it’s the Elvis Presley version! (seriously I love this song)…Swoon…don’t worry, I’m inviting you all to “Romi’s Big Day” ).

As you read this post, I encourage you to listen to Elvis, so here ya go:

 

Alright then, let’s get started…

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Love.

It might just be the most two-faced emotion in the world.  It can bring you your greatest joy, as well as your toughest pain…in the end, love is a nasty bitch.

And how does this treachourous dance even start?  It doesn’t take a lot (or so I’ve learned), and most often, it begins with a little crush…

***

…When I was 12, I experienced my very first crush. He was a dreamy All-American fella, with a hint of Jimmy-Dean-ish rebellion.

I’d known him for 3 long years, a time that had been peppered with verbal and physical assault (of the mutual variety).

It was childhood animosity at its finest .

I had never really thought of him in any great detail (except in relation to punching), but he was starting to grow and blossom.

In his current state, he had recently grown 4 inches (and of course I mean “G-rated” height vs. “X-rated” length, you sick sick bastards…) .  His jaw-line was coming in nicely, slowly assuming a rigid and angular form (my favourite ). His hands had also grown, changing from the grubby little child-hands that grossed me out, to those rugged “look at me I’m in a band and play guitar” type-hands.

Needless to say, he was nothing short of “delicious man-boy”…this was all very new and exciting.

Now when I first truly noticed I’d fallen for the boy, it kinda went like this:

-The class was in line at the teacher’s desk, so she could grade all our quizzes one-by-one. He was standing directly in front of me, in a big blue sweatshirt with a “Wolverines” logo on the front (I guess the “Michigan Wolverines” are a football team, but fuck it, I hated football then and I still friggin’ do…).

-As I stood behind him in line, I started to take him in, inch-by-lovely-inch. From his dirty blond mane of-”you should’ve shampooed that yesterday“-hair, right down to the 5 or 6 freckles on his nose; he was beautiful. He was also wearing some musky drug-store cologne, and I won’t even pretend I wasn’t loving it . As I leaned in closer (to take a deeper sniff of his “essence”), the back of my hand brushed his sleeve, and THAT’S what really killed it:

-THAT was the very first time, I became all…“weak in the vagina”.

Magical.

Now even though I was obviously smitten, there was ONE glaring problem in this “we’re gonna fall in love and get married” plan:

-He had a girlfriend.

Yes, he was courting some All-American girl, who had grown all her boobs by age 9 (wtf?), and was now running around with GI-NORMOUS ”floaties” (had she lived in 1912, I know she could’ve saved the Titanic, I just KNOW IT!).  She also wore make-up, which I would NOT be getting into for another 6 years (mom’s defense: eye-shadow=whore). 

So basically I was fucked (not in a good way), which meant I had to sit back, and slowly bide my time.

I decided to keep a low profile, and maybe do some blossoming of my own in the meantime…

Fast-forward 2 years later, and suddenly I was in high school (I know, TWO years later, boy do I work fast (shut up)) .

Anyhoo, with two years of development under my belt, I had changed in the following ways:

………

???

————————————————————————————————————————

Not to be a tease, but this story’s pretty long, so I’ll post the conclusion later on in the week.

And that leaves us with the following questions:

-What happens to our lovesick fool? 

-What sort of crushing embarrassment befalls her?  Is it the overt, more physical kind? Or the subtle, more emotional kind that eats away at her, until many years later she jumps off a ledge?  (Feel free to mull it over … )

My Arranged Marriage: Progress Report

As you may recall, I recently decided to get married (in that classy “arranged” kinda way). 

I was hoping to be engaged by December 1st, sooo…wtf?

Well I got a bunch of hits on my profile, so it wasn’t that.

 Oh, and in case you were wondering…

—————————————————

Profile for SpicyCakes41:

Height: tall (but not so tall that it’s emasculating)

Weight: like a Bollywood actress

Face: like a Bollywood actress

Skills: laundry-with-a-smile, shoe-polishing, making tandoori chicken, mending husband’s shirts, speaking softly, etc.

Extras: warm and welcoming uterus; good for 5+ babies…

—————————————————-

So again, wtf?

Perhaps it was the strength of my physical/domestic assets…was it a little too much for the fellas???

I couldn’t figure it out, and I was almost inclined to shut-down PLAN: Arranged Marriage.

But then I found it:

-My saving grace

It came in the form of this story, where an Indian man got married to a grade-A bitch (of the canine variety). 

That’s right, decked out in an orange sari, this bitch’s dream came true (i.e. the dream of “human dong”).

Before it became official, the family reviewed the bitch, as is custom in Indian culture (Is she a virgin? Is she carrying fleas? Is she likely to stray? etc…).

Once she received the stamp of approval, the couple exchanged vows, surrounded by family and friends:

I KNOW, doesn’t that picture leave you speechless? 

“Arranged Marriage transcends species“, what a concept!

In other words, there IS hope for Romi yet! 

So forget human males, the population of animal dudes is probably 1000x greater!  And like hellllooo…talk about variety eh? I’ve got the ENTIRE Animal Kingdom to solicit now; lions and tigers and bears, oh my!

I should probably begin by spamming my personal profile; I’ll start with the “big ’n trendy” Zoos, ’cause I only want the top-notch “captives” (and between you and me, I sure wouldn’t mind a little ”elephant”…mmm…)

So wish me luck, and let’s say engagement by…January 1st, ’08?  

I’ll update you then with good news or bad news…