Another Embarrassing Moment

The 5th Grade was a wonderful time for me!

I was cast in one of the leading roles in the school musical program as Charbonneau, the french fur trapper and husband of Sacagawea, who helped guide Lewis and Clark. Someone even lent me a real coon-skin cap for the role. I got chickenpox that year and gave them to the cute little girl who sat next to me, Lanaya Wilcox; which prevented her from competing in the district spelling bee that she surely would have won that year. I was competing in sports like soccer and football. I had been reinstated into Cub Scouts by then and was well on my way to my Webelos Award. Most touching of all that happened that year was the Mother’s Day poem I had written that won the local essay contest. It was rewarded by a dozen roses for my mom, the poem was framed, and we got a family meal gift certificate to Denny’s which was presented to me and my mom in front of all of Lincoln Elementary School at an assembly. What a treat! When it came to fine dining, Denny’s was a whole step above our monthly outing to Arctic Circle.

Side Story: My dad was a hard working framer during those years. He didn’t make a lot of money, but we never felt deprived of anything. Mom and Dad loved us and my youth was filled with fun. My parents would splurge once a month by clipping the coupons from the newspaper and took us to Arctic Circle. The whole family could eat for about $12.00. We always looked forward to the prize in the kid’s meal and I recall that often we’d go to Lakeview Park and feed the ducks our french fries. At some point in our fast food maturation, we realized that we could upgrade our soda pops to milk shakes. We loved the Oreo milk shakes and the bigger the chunk of Oreo, the better! One time I thought I had a full size Oreo at the bottom of my shake, but as it turned out, it was a greasy bolt that had fallen out of the milk shake machine. Yuck! Anyway, back to my embarrassing moment story…

I really enjoyed school and was excelling in every aspect of my young “Leave it to Beaver” life. Looking back, I was verging on immense popularity among my teachers and peers…and then it happened!

It was five minutes until the end of the school day. Mrs. Talkington must have run out of lesson material for the day as she asked us to sit with our hands and heads on our desks in silence as we waited for the bell to ring. The desks were those ones with the faux wood tops attached by metal piping to the orange plastic chairs. I was sitting on the back row, right next to my best friend Ira Burton.

Suddenly, a whoosh of air came from my derriere, and reverberated on the plastic chair, thus amplifying the volume to a near deafening rumble. The class of 5th graders erupted into laughter as they turned and looked in my direction. (Did I mention yet that I was a certifiable genius?) In that moment, when everyone looked at me, and in spite of my embarrassed and red flushed face, I started laughing and pointed at my best friend Ira Burton thereby deflecting the shame onto him.

Ira was small in stature and a good natured fellow and he too was a certifiable genius. While rolling with laughter to the point of tears streaming down his face, he countered my finger pointing by pointing back at me and shouting above all the commotion that I was indeed the culprit. My cover was blown!

“Oh the shame. Thought of changing my name. And I’d get down hearted, every time that I far...” Hey! This is a family friendly blog. (Thanks Simba and Timón for your perfectly appropriate lyrics)

Needless to say, I was embarrassed to the extreme. As Mrs. Talkington quelled the snickers and scoffs, Scott Davis, the chubby troubled kid in the class, called me “fart-boy.” He got a detention and was forced to give me an awkward apology, which took the whole incident from embarrassment to humiliation.

I’ve never been the same since.