The Power of Residual Embarrassment?

Dear Blog Reader

I hope that this finds you doing well. I am fine. We continue to glide through August. Kids are going back to school in a staggered start. The Amish child gardening efforts continue to pay dividends. My current tomato intake has crossed the mouth sore threshold. I know that the high acid levels are the culprits, but I can't stop eating the lovely miss Beverly's salsa. Finally, Hoosiers all over this great state are in the throes of that great agricultural, hot tub lovin spectacle, the Indiana State Fair. We lift our favorite fried food on a stick in salute.

Last week in the winning limerick blog, I had requested that you, the readers, send in any examples of Doyle's limericks. Thank you Danielle for two shining examples.

I had a rooster named Red.
Who could get Danielle out of bed;
With an early morning crow,
He'd be up and ready to go.
And make Danielle happy, "she said"!

I had a rooster named Red.
He was feisty and very well fed.
On a hot summer day,
He got sick on the hay.
And now my rooster is dead!

Doyle, we lift our collective pens in salute.

I had the strangest experience the other day at work. I was taking a break and quietly sitting there in revelry. Suddenly, I was struck by a memory of an embarrassing moment. I devolved into a shaking mass of emotion. I found myself saying over and over in my mind  "that was embarrassing, that was embarrassing, that was embarrassing." I was immediately transported back to a personal moment of shame.

It is even stranger that right now, 4 days later, I cannot remember what I was so vividly recounting 96 hours ago. Paging Dr. Freud, paging Dr. Freud. It is an epic battle of the conscious and the subconscious. The subconscious lobbing embarrassing memory hand grenades and the conscious cleaning up,  encouraging passersby to "move along, nothing to see here."

I remember thinking 4 days ago, that it really wasn't that embarrassing. It wasn't event that defined me. I survived. I learned to not act that way again; at least less and less often. I haven't done that in a very long time. Like the lesson of the hot stove, it is a lesson learned. And yet this semi embarrassing non-repeated event can still fill me with dread.

It reminds me of an essay by Gene Shepard, a Hoosier author of some renown. In a book of collected essays, "In God We Trust, All Others Pay Cash," he writes about the difference between the famous and the rest of us, the great unwashed.

He writes, “There are about four times in a man’s life, or a woman’s, too, for that matter, when unexpectedly, from out of the darkness, the blazing carbon lamp, the cosmic searchlight of Truth shines full upon them. It is how we react to those moments that forever seals our fate. One crowd simply puts on its sunglasses, lights another cigar, and heads for the nearest plush French restaurant in the jazziest section of town, sits down and orders a drink, and ignores the whole thing. While we the Doomed, caught in the brilliant glare of illumination, see ourselves inescapably for what we are, and from that day on skulk in the weeds, hoping no one else will spot us.”

Ain't it the truth? Gene Shepard, we lift our blushing red faces in salute.

Take care

Roger.