I was watching this old re-run of Frasier the other day where Dr. Frasier Crane makes an absolute fool of himself in front of his radio audience and later continues his bumbling ways at a conference. And each incident happens to be wilder than the other. Well then, that's Dr. Crane for you. Never a dull moment, thanks to his innate sense of bad humor. I have done enough silly things in my life to make me cringe with embarrassment whenever I remember them. At such times, the feeling of "Why me?" haunts me over and over again. In some extreme cases, these I-will-haunt-you-for-the-rest-of-my-life moments caused more harm than embarrassment and the aftershocks can be felt even today. Truth be told, some of them were totally my doing and the rest, well let's just say, they just happened. Or maybe I was in the wrong spot at the wrong time. And my friends are never the worse for causing me grief over those silly situations. So every day I try hard to avoid getting myself into such situations but eventually I do get into them. There is some sort of unknown gravity that pulls me into such blackholes. I call such incidents my Frasier moments because I have seen no one else excepting Frasier get into such spots and not able to get away with it. And me too. I'm not as snooty as Dr. Crane, but hey, embarrassment knows no boundaries, class or creed. And as I mentioned in one of my earlier posts that I've had several of these, and then some.
I remember about this incident, where I was in a conference and I was talking to this small, laconic gentleman about some topic I pretended I knew a lot about and this small, laconic gentleman was nodding in amazement as if to show how well I knew my stuff. Turns out that the small, laconic gentleman was actually a professor in that field. And I came to know about it well after I finished with, "you should read about it sometime, its an interesting subject." The rest of the evening I maintained the same space between him as Pluto maintains with the Sun in our Solar System. There was this other time when I turned up for a dinner unshaven in jeans and tees only to find that it was a formal gathering of black jackets (if not ties). Reason? I missed out on reading the fine print announcing the dress code. I walked out of the gathering before someone could pull me in to save myself from further trouble and in the course had to miss a great dinner. The one I remember most and I hate the most is the one where I once gave a present (don't remember what) to a girl on a Valentine's Day in front of all her friends while I was in college. She of course calmly rejected it (speaking of which, I would have been surprised if she hadn't). That was the last time she ever talked to me and that was the last time anyone ever took me seriously again in college. Juvenile, but remember, years later, Fred Savage still hates himself for doing such stuff in that wonderful TV series 'Wonder Years'. Even after all these years, someone from my college days remembered me from that incident. And we had a good laugh at it, at my expense. Sweet. All of these incidents are just the tip of a massive iceberg and there are worse ones lurking somewhere down in the murky bottom. I would never forgive myself if I take them out of my black book and put them here. Never a dull moment but enough miserable moments that caused some flutter, giggles and of course to me a lot of embarrassment. And the only reason I'm putting some of them (some as in, 3 in a million. OK let's round it to the nearest billion) here is because my friend today was talking about this embarrassing moment he recently had and was going on and on about it. And of course the Frasier episode too. So its no longer "Why me?" but "Why us?". Well, I'm feeling much better now.
I remember about this incident, where I was in a conference and I was talking to this small, laconic gentleman about some topic I pretended I knew a lot about and this small, laconic gentleman was nodding in amazement as if to show how well I knew my stuff. Turns out that the small, laconic gentleman was actually a professor in that field. And I came to know about it well after I finished with, "you should read about it sometime, its an interesting subject." The rest of the evening I maintained the same space between him as Pluto maintains with the Sun in our Solar System. There was this other time when I turned up for a dinner unshaven in jeans and tees only to find that it was a formal gathering of black jackets (if not ties). Reason? I missed out on reading the fine print announcing the dress code. I walked out of the gathering before someone could pull me in to save myself from further trouble and in the course had to miss a great dinner. The one I remember most and I hate the most is the one where I once gave a present (don't remember what) to a girl on a Valentine's Day in front of all her friends while I was in college. She of course calmly rejected it (speaking of which, I would have been surprised if she hadn't). That was the last time she ever talked to me and that was the last time anyone ever took me seriously again in college. Juvenile, but remember, years later, Fred Savage still hates himself for doing such stuff in that wonderful TV series 'Wonder Years'. Even after all these years, someone from my college days remembered me from that incident. And we had a good laugh at it, at my expense. Sweet. All of these incidents are just the tip of a massive iceberg and there are worse ones lurking somewhere down in the murky bottom. I would never forgive myself if I take them out of my black book and put them here. Never a dull moment but enough miserable moments that caused some flutter, giggles and of course to me a lot of embarrassment. And the only reason I'm putting some of them (some as in, 3 in a million. OK let's round it to the nearest billion) here is because my friend today was talking about this embarrassing moment he recently had and was going on and on about it. And of course the Frasier episode too. So its no longer "Why me?" but "Why us?". Well, I'm feeling much better now.
.JPG)
No comments:
Post a Comment