On the Edge of What?

A few months ago when I started this blog, one of my earliest posts was about accidentally insulting things people say to others. If you weren't reading my blog at the time, I'll be self-promotional for a quick sec and give you the link! Here ya go.

While being on the receiving end of those insults is usually funny (because although you are insulted...the other person is completely unaware they did anything wrong...and it's funny to watch people who have no idea what's actually going on.) But you know what's not very funny? Being the person who has no idea what's actually going on...and then realizing it way after the fact.

I absolutely hate the feeling you get when you feel embarrassed or ashamed of something you said or did, but it was so long ago that there's now no good way to fix it.

Like when you're laughing with an acquaintance about ugly names and you mention the name Francis, and then 2 weeks later, in front of a big group, someone says to that same acquaintance, "Hey how's Frank?" and you realize that it's their dad's name. Now that I'm typing this out, it sounds really trivial...like something they'd put on Lizzie McGuire...but tell me you wouldn't have a slight panic moment thinking about how 2 weeks ago that acquaintance was thinking to themselves, "Ha! This person has no clue my dad's name is Francis otherwise she would have never said that..."

And I get this feeling over even MORE trivial things than that. Like the time I was singing Lady Gaga's "Edge of Glory" song as "I'm on the edge of loving..." After maybe a month of thinking that was what she was saying, I was listening to the Kiss 108 top 30 countdown on the radio and Ryan Seacrest starts talking about how Lady Gaga's "Edge of Glory" has moved up 4 places and I think..."GLORY?!?"

Then I'm thinking back to all the times I had sang it wrong, and who had heard me and been thinking, "what did she just say??"

And what can you really do to redeem yourself at that point? The damage is done. At least when you have an embarrassing moment in real-time you can either pretend you said something else, or laugh at yourself or something...but a delayed embarrassing moment is unworkable.

The redeeming thing in all of this is knowing that it must happen to everyone at some point.

And if you're thinking it hasn't happened to you...maybe it has and you just haven't realized it yet! AH!


"Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt."
-Abraham Lincoln
(I do not follow this advice often enough.)