embarrassing

So I can't believe I'm about to tell you all this. I don't believe any of you know this story. To be honest, I'd forgotten all about it.

I was sewing up another batch of cat collars when I was suddenly reminded of one of my most embarrassing moments.

It happened in middle school, of course. Middle school was not kind to me. I had not quite figured out what a flat iron was, and insisted on brushing my curly hair every morning. Frizz city. I also had bangs. Oh, curly frizzy bangs. My solution to that was to hair spray them so that they stuck straight out in this awful stiff curled-under bang. To make matters worse, I'd grown C-cup boobs overnight, had big red zits that only seemed to pop up on my nose, and wore a ratty pair of adidas tennis shoes with a tshirt and ill-fitting mom jeans every day. What? Adidas was cool, right? I had a mouth full of bojangly teeth. I was loud. I was hyper. I was so, so very un-cool. I just walked around all awkward and tried unsuccessfully not to be a total spazz.

Well, early in middle school, I took Home Ec. Oh MY GOD I loved home ec. I was the home ec teacher's pet. I was the home ec Hermoine times ten. I was so damn good at home ec. It's embarrassing to think of how nerdy I was in home ec. Anyway, I think we've established that I really liked home ec and everyone was probably like, "Oh my god there goes the home ec dork."

One of our sewing projects in home-ec was a pair of flannel boxers. You know, the style in the 90's was to hang out in boxers, preferably rolled up at the waist band. I actually can't find any examples in google images, so maybe it was just our school. We rocked the 90's grunge look with plaid boxer shorts. So, in an effort to be cool and hip, our teacher selected that as one of our projects.

I, in my naiive little 10 or 11-year old brain, thought, "I already have a pair of boxer shorts."
But you know who loved hanging out in boxer shorts? My dad.
Oh, God. This is so bad.

So I figured it'd make a great Christmas gift to sew my dad a pair of boxer shorts. Kill two birds with one stone: complete a class project and cross Dad off my Christmas list. I got his waist measurements from mom, and proceeded to use those to make my project.

Now, this whole thing could have been avoided if I wasn't such a home ec snob. I was quick to point out when someone else was doing something wrong. My projects were always perfect. When the teacher wanted to use one of our projects to demonstrate something to the class, I was the first to raise my hand, so everyone could see what a great job I'd been doing. Sometimes she used someone else's, but of course this time she chose mine.

She demonstrated a technique that turned our one-dimensional shorts into something that actually resembled shorts, and all was going well until, in one swift move, mine were suddenly revealed as this HUGE pair of shorts. Now I was a little girl, barely 100 pounds at that age. My shorts should have been tiny. But when the teacher held them up, they looked monstrous. I swear to God the class gasped. I think -I- gasped. I wasn't prepared for the shock of how big they were compared to all these middle schoolers' shorts.

Everyone's natural assumption was that I had mis- measured. I wish, oh I wish that I had just let them think that. But NOoOoOOooooo.
I, the home ec queen, couldn't let them think I had done something wrong. So instead, I was very quick to say, before it registered in my head what I was about to say, "Oh I made them for my dad."

Oh, Oh, if you could see the looks I got. Confusion, disgust, amusement, a whole array of faces staring back at me, including the teacher. It hit me what I had just said, and I was mortified. I turned bright red and tried not to think about how I was the weird overly enthusiastic home ec girl who had just made her dad a pair of giant underwear in class. If I wasn't awkward enough, let's tack that on.

Needless to say, I kept quiet for the rest of that project.