271. It’s Okay To Be Embarrassed

We have all been embarrassed. We’ve all done embarrassing things. It sucks AND….we’ve all been there.

Transcripts may not appear in their final version and are subject to change.

Nora McInerny:  I’m Nora McInerny, and it’s going to be okay.  I am a person who has been embarrassed, I think, since the day I was born. I was three weeks late arriving on this earth, and that’s rude, and uncomfortable, and also, you know what?  I had, uh, aspirated meconium, okay? Google what that means.

Okay? It was embarrassing. I was fresh out of the womb and I knew that was embarrassing and the embarrassment just kept going. I grew very fast. Very fast. Oh, so fast. So fast. Do you know what it’s like to be in middle school  wearing outfits that your mother’s peers would wear to show people a three bedroom, two bathroom condo townhouse on the edge of downtown? 

I looked like a realtor. That’s not a slam. 90s realtors were hot, but I was in 5th grade. Okay, I was wearing slacks in 5th grade. I was wearing vests in 5th grade. I was wearing bowler hats. That was a different choice. And I blame that on  Blossom.  Which I never even got to see as a show, but I knew culturally as a touchstone, and I thought, hats.

Hats, hats, hats. That’s embarrassing.  First day of high school. Everybody is in the gym. By everybody, I mean boys. The only thing I cared about. And I had left my backpack in the gym and I went to go get it. And I,  Slipped, tripped, who knows? Backpack rips open. All my things spew across the floor. No one helps me pick them up.

They just watch in silence, in my mind silence, in my memory silence, while I pick up all of my earthly belongings, put them back into my Eddie Bauer backpack, and then leave. And my friend is on the baseball team and he says that the coach when I left said, you see her?  You see her? She could have played for us.

last night. So, you know, by the way, that probably obviously wasn’t the first day of high school, but it was freshman year of high school that that happened. So that was embarrassing. College. I get to college. I’m walking to a class. I have to go down a flight of stairs. I go down it on my butt involuntarily.

Thud, thud, thud, thud, thud, thud, thud. There I am.  I, again, I, at this point, I’m six feet tall. I’m, I’m very conspicuous. I’ve never once been inconspicuous. One of the great regrets of my life is that I will never get to be a private investigator or a spy because it’s hard not to notice a woman of my height, especially when my hair is pink and I’m, you know, walking into walls because my spatial reasoning is off.

I used to believe that I would die of embarrassment, that my cause of death would be embarrassed.  embarrassed. She just, she was, she literally just got embarrassed to death. But I am also here to tell you that I am 41 years old and I am still here. I am still kicking, baby. 

But it’s hard to remember this when you are embarrassed. It’s hard to remember that when you are at a caribou coffee in the suburbs of Minneapolis and you are standing in line for quite a long time and you’re, you know, Getting a drink and you finally get your drink and then you’re putting, you know, just cream, sugar, whatever into your coffee.

Then someone taps you on the shoulder and says, um, Oh, your skirt’s not zipped. And you’ve been fully standing in line with your skirt, not zipped at all. So your whole butt has been out. at the caribou coffee. And only one person bothered to tell you your butt is out. Your butt is out. And this coffee shop is very close to your office.

So colleagues were there and it was not a colleague who told you that your butt was out. Your butt was just,  when that happens, it feels like you’re going to die of embarrassment, but something happens. You don’t die of embarrassment. It is  hard to remember in these moments. That you are experiencing a natural part of being a person.

It’s hard to believe it when your parents, as a child, say, Trust me, someday nobody will remember this. Except you.  You’ll never forget it. You’ll never forget what it’s like to be in 7th grade and have people ask if you’re your friend’s mother.  No, I am simply her peer. I just happen to be eight inches taller than her.

Thank you. Um, but if it means we can be at the mall unaccompanied, yeah, I guess I’m her mom. 

So it’s okay to be embarrassed. Oh, it’s hard to remember. Okay, so it’s hard to remember these moments that, um,  Someday you will be the only person who remembers it, but you probably will be the only person who remembers it. It is okay to get embarrassed. It’s okay to be embarrassing. I think being an embarrassing person is also just a very human experience.

I have to remind myself of this when I do something that really I do think any normal person would do, like just breathe and my kids look at me like.  I’ve committed a crime and I’m like, I,  I’m simply respirating right now. That is all that I’m doing.  It’s okay to be embarrassed. It’s okay to be embarrassing.