We all go through with these in our lives, the brief embarrassing moments experienced wherein an individual just wished that it could shrivel up into nothingness out of sheer society witnessed stupidity. I was in two thoughts about blogging about my most embarrassing moments ever. After some reflection, I came to the deduction that these happened sufficiently long ago enough for me to write about them without feeling like a complete artard. I’m not that same guy any more (or at least I hope I’m not…).
The first ever moment of embarrassment I can recall clearly in my life occurred way back when I was still in primary school (grade 3 or 4 or around the period of 1993-1994). Us Muslim kids had double school, we attended regular classes in the mornings and then went off to madressa (private Islamic education) in the afternoons. Our madressa group was not huge, 20-30 kids in all, and as a result we all worked in the same room under one or two teachers regardless of grade.
Let me get back to my story… On this particular day once upon a time, I was just coming over with the flu. Not keen to hear excuses, my parents sent me of to madressa armed with a solitary handkerchief. I knew that I had to endure the 2 hour class with a runny nose and hoped all would be well. Alas, the dripping nares ceased to desist, just halfway into our class and my handkerchief was soaked with… well you know… and I still had another HOUR to go!!!
What was I going to do!? If I had a long sleeved jersey, I could always use the sleeves and if I wasn’t so scared of the teacher I could have just gone to the bathroom and taken a bunch of loo paper to do the job instead. I didn’t do any of those things, my solution at the time was probably the best compromise I could come up with under the circumstances. I decided to twist the opposite corners of my handkerchief into nose plugs and stuff each into an offending nostril to hold back the downpour of snot.
GENUIS!
No…not quite… I quickly found out that my solution was NOT a long term one. My nose quickly filled with snot and the stuff was now dribbling back down my throat and making it really difficult to breath. I had to do something! ‘Just go and ask permission to go to the toilet Ebrahim!’ I kept telling myself but I just couldn’t bear walking up in front of the class with my makeshift nose plugs.
I HAD TO DO SOMETHING!!!
What happened next was something I had done out of desperation, despair and instinct (…all mixed together in puke coloured bowl). I pulled out the nose plugs, stuck them in my mouth and stucked them dry before quickly putting them back into my nose to absorb more of the liquidy ooze. By repeating the process over and over again I found out that I could keep up with the downpour and even use my nose to breath whilst sucking the plugs dry. AWESOME!
I carried on with my lesson as per usual after that, the whole nose siphon process became instinctual and all was well. Or so I thought till I heard some giggling coming from the popular girls seated in the front corner of the classroom. I glanced up from my work to see that they were looking in my direction. Not fazed at all, I turned around thinking that the source of their amusement came from behind me… and sure enough, there was a kid passed out and sleeping on his desk back there. I too found this amusing and started giggling at the sleeping kid all the while turning to look at him before glancing back at the popular girls sharing in their fun. The doodle below illustrates the situation quite nicely I think…
Their little giggles had now turned onto what looked liked lung popping efforts to contain massive outbursts of laughter. The mood was quite contagious and I too ended up in this state (unaware that throughout the ordeal I was continually siphoning out my nose with a makeshift nose-plug-snot sponge…). A little while later the sleeping kid woke up and moved away. Sensing that this was the end of our much enjoyed amusement, I calmed myself down and continued my work.
‘Wait a second’ I thought why haven’t the popular girls stopped laughing?
Bing! (a light went on).
It was ME!!! AAARGH!!!! I clenched my eyelids as tightly as I could before curling over onto my desk and hiding my face in my arms. What an idiot I must have looked laughing; sharing and making eye contact with the popular girls in the joke that I was the subject of…
…Sigh…
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