laugh it up

My housemates always say that I have the best stories. Really, they mean that they enjoy hearing tales of the ways that I embarrass myself on a daily basis. For whatever reason, I tend to land myself in awkward, cringe-worthy situations with great frequency. Be it falling down stairs, saying the completely wrong thing in front of an attractive member of the opposite sex, falling over my own shoes, getting lost, falling on completely flat ground, or dropping some sort of food item/hot beverage/fragile, irreplaceable heirloom on the floor, I seem to experience in one month the amount of embarrassing moments most people are awarded in a lifetime.

Even this morning I managed to mortify myself only about an hour after waking up. I was opening the cafe, getting things I needed from the back room and innocently listening to the classic hit "Disco Inferno" on my iPod. As luck would have it, someone from the cleaning staff decides to enter the room to get a mop just as I was following 50 Cent's instructions to "shake that ass, girl." It figures.

After that incident, I started running through the list of awkward/mortifying things that have happened to me in the past year. None of them are epically horrible or life-ruining, but they are certainly numerous. Thinking of them almost made me want to change my name and run away to Alaska, where at most I can only embarass myself in front of polar bears and the occasional Eskimo. But then I realized that these moments sort of shape who I am, and I don't think I would take back any of them.

Laughter, and humor in general, are two things that I adore almost more than anything. I'm sure that's because I have learned (and am continually learning) what it means to laugh at myself. Maybe it's a good thing for the ego to be humbled occasionally, for one to realize that perfection is far from attainable and that life is fun and joyful and shouldn't always be thought of so seriously. The act of living becomes a colorful process because it is full of risk and things don't work out as we plan them. I don't know anyone who always does the right thing or says the right thing - not even characters in books (or if those characters do exist, I sure don't want to read about them). So who are we to let something like being less than perfect make us feel awful? I'm going to screw up - maybe more often than others - because I am human. This fact, I've found, is directly correlated to the fact that life is hilarious. This world is full of stumbling idiots and that is something I am so grateful for.

So here is my advice, as a sage expert in experiencing "embarrassing" moments: go talk to that cute boy even though you might say something dumb. Go walking in the snow even if you might slip on the sidewalk. Go shake your ass. And if this results in some funny looks or muffled snickers, don't let yourself blush and be embarrassed or go buy a parka in contemplation of a move to the Arctic. Just throw your head back and smile big. Laugh it up.