I'll Get My Coat

I love You’ve Been Framed. It makes me feel so much better to know I’m not the only person who does embarrassing things. The difference being that the people on YBF have had their one, single embarrassing incident recorded for the entire nation to laugh about (it hasn’t happened to me yet, but it’s only a matter of time) but embarrassing things happen to me every day.

A few weeks ago I mentioned a mortifying situation where I had sent a rather personal and hideously graphic text message to the wrong person. This weekend I experienced the joys of reliving the entire sorry affair when I actually ran into the guy who received the text in a restaurant. To make it even worse, he hadn’t realised the text message was from me, and I not only reminded him of the incident but also revealed that it was me that had sent it. And this wasn’t simply an uncomfortable private exchange between me and said friend, it was witnessed, with much hilarity, by my entire book club. My only redemption was that the guy was a total gentleman, and dealt with the situation with the kind of grace I can only dream of having.

All I want is to get through my life with a little bit of class and some dignity please. Is that really too much to ask?

Having kids has provided even more material for the god of embarrassment to have a laugh on me. They get a daily treat of a lolly each and son number 2 being only 22 months has a habit of having what he wants of the lolly then leaving it lying around when something else comes along to take his attention. I regularly find lolly sticks stuck to the wall, shoved in the DVD player or floating in my coffee cup. So off I went one day to pick up son number 1 from preschool, for once feeling vaguely presentable because I had done my hair and put some slap on, only to get home and realise I had a sticky Drumstick with stringy stretched bits and tiny tooth marks in it, stuck to the back of my coat. Seriously, it could only happen to me. At least I’m well prepared for the moment when the kids start accusing me of being an embarrassing parent, I’m already there boys.

School was a particularly shameful time for me. I was the girl who once accidentally farted in class and my ‘friend’ outed me. I left a pair of knickers (lent to a friend who had stayed over at the weekend and returned that day) half hanging out of my locker, and came back to find a crowd of kids standing around my locker, laughing at my apple catchers. I could not deal with public speaking in any form and spent the most uncomfortable five minutes of everyone’s life stumbling through my essay on what I did on my holidays. Feeling like I was going to vomit, I decided to miss out the middle section so the story made no sense whatsoever, but was blissfully shorter than the original. My teacher glared at me, but the other kids and parents in the audience just looked relieved. They will thank me forevermore for cutting short a story which probably felt just as uncomfortable to them as me.

What made it worse was that teachers had absolutely no sympathy for my apparent lack of social grace and actually seemed to revel in my awkwardness by casting me in the worst possible roles in pageants and plays. The Tin Man in the Wizard of Oz, drawing attention to my rounded form in a costume made out of cardboard tubes covered in tin foil, and the Queen Mother in the Royal Wedding re-enactment (hideous hat, crepe dress and my mums bra stuffed with oranges). I never even got a look in as Dorothy or Lady Di, as I clearly did not possess the charm for such dignified ladies, only the kind of clunky demeanour which suited a large man made out of metal and a doddery old lady in high heels four sizes too big.

This is one of the reasons why I am reassessing my relationship with alcohol. Without it I am aware that I’m a magnet for embarrassing situations, and can attempt to modify my behaviour accordingly, yet after a few drinks I am still a magnet but start to believe I am actually graceful and dignified, dangerous territory.

I love You’ve Been Framed because while I can be the cackling person laughing at other peoples misfortunes (a side of the fence I rarely get to enjoy being on), I also totally empathise with the poor people falling off the stage, or catching their hair on fire on their birthday cake candles; because that person is ME, every single day.

The catch phrase “I’ll get my coat” may have been created just for me, because I so often wish I had just never left the house, the risk of humiliation is so much lower within your own four walls. When I want the ground to swallow me up I just feel like saying “I’ll get my coat”, except my coat would have a lolly stuck to the back of it, you know it.