YA Storytellers : *blushes* or yeah I d-id….

This week for Fun Friday the YA Storytellers are dishing embarrassing moments. There are sooooo many to choose from for me. But the one that just cracks me up is the one that happened to me in Houston. I hadn’t flown very far, it was only a four hour flight. So I can’t blame this on jet leg or even exhaustion, I guess I could try and blame it on what I call travel haze. Overstimulation. Rushing. This thing and that thing on the mind. I was not quite where I needed to be CLEARLY.

See, I had to pee. Yeah. And so I did. Only, as I did, a very deep voice in the stall next to me said in a southern, very gentlemanly accent, “Ma’am, I believe you are in the wrong bathroom.” He must have seen my pink painted toes. You know those moments, the ones where you’re like, REALLY? It sort of hits me between the eyes and the center of my stomach at the same time and I alternate between wanting to laugh and disappear. I didn’t laugh. I remember that because I was so gobsmacked, as a good friend would say–it actually is the perfect word to describe how it felt for me. So I sort of doubled over on my half-naked self and swore silently. Then he added, “I’ll make sure no one else comes in while you are in here.” And my rescuer was a very wonderful man who asked me if I was okay. And I thought I was, but maybe deep down I really wasn’t. Anyway, looking into his deep dark eyes and seeing his white smile made whiter by his chestnut skin, I felt certain he was an angel watching out for me. A perfect stranger’s kindness is usually what meets my embarrassment every time. I guess fast friends are formed in the intimacy of being vulnerable, being human. And for every time I’ve wanted to disappear when I’ve been embarrassed, I’ve been given a measure of magic too.

Ginny, in Winnemucca, a small-town fairy tale has an embarrassing moment when she realizes she’s falling for the local axe-murderer…at least that’s what her best friend Lizzy calls him. Of course this happens the day she’s planning to breakup with Bobby, her fiáncee. Here’s the excerpt:

Clyde placed his murdering hand on the doorknob and took his

eyes off me for the very first time. He walked out of the stock room

but something floated in the air behind him and whatever-it-was

caught in the door Lizzy held open. I bent down, and freed the

paper, but it was just an empty toilet paper roll. I tossed it into the

garbage but when it landed on a pile of folded Pampers packing

boxes, I saw what I hadn’t seen when I held it in my hand––ribbons

of blue words.

“What’s that?” Lizzy said pawing my hand.

“Nothing.” I rolled it over in my fingers trying to make sense of the

scribbling. But, it wasn’t scribbling. It was, poetry. Even had a title,

No one loves you like me. Dated the day before.

There’s a circle, a spiral I walk

with dear Ginny

and a wish we’d never part

as we lift over our barbed wire sea

Ginny. Me. Clyde signed his name so hard it indented the

“Let me see,” Lizzy said. But I stuffed the poem in my apron like a

used Kleenex. Like it wasn’t the most enchanting moment of my

life––that a man I’d never spoken to wrote a love poem about me.

And for the first time I didn’t believe the rumors about Clyde.

Lizzy unloaded another box of shampoo and I peeked at the next

line:

The Devil’s rope around my heart

I wanted to know more about Clyde as desperately as I wanted

nothing to do with Bobby.

“Now, you girls get back to work,” Charlie said, all fake mad, his

forehead a sea of wrinkles, his tuffty eyebrows formed a V like a

Muppet. Tie Guy sighed, scribbling on his clipboard again.

“Anna knows where you are. Bobby’ll be here any minute,”

Lizzy whispered in my ear.

I rolled Clyde’s poetry in my fingers, trying to read every word.

“Let me tell Bobby.” Lizzy eyed the poem.

I shook my head, dropped the poem into my apron pocket and

grabbed Lizzy by the hand so we could catch up to Clyde. My cell

vibrated again. I searched up and down every aisle but Clyde had

vanished. The clocks on the new majestic shelves in aisle nine

weren’t running. I stared at them anyway.

“Why are you just standing there?” Lizzy asked.

Clyde walked past empty picture frames and table lamps.

He met me at the frozen clocks and leaned his mop against the

majestic shelves.

My cell vibrated again, and all I wanted to do was breathe in

Clyde’s big-sky, blue-eyed stare. My stomach sank knowing why.

My heart had Devil’s rope around it too. I held tight to Espy’s

“Lizzy Fairchild, to the register,” Charlie announced over the

Lizzy said, “Keep away from my best friend, Convict.” She threw

Clyde an axe-murdering gaze on her walk down the aisle. She

was a master at axe-murdering gazes.

I’d never really seen Clyde before. And right then he wasn’t just

one of the people on the edges of my life anymore, he was front

and center.

“Straddling the fence is the same as straddling the middle of the

road,” Clyde said, like he knew the ripening would seal our fates.

Like he’d been with me when my sleep went thin and I’d straddle

the open road. And there, in aisle nine, I fell for Clyde. It was

wrong. It was lousy timing. But it was real. My heart jack-hammered

and more than anything I wish I had the power to freeze time.

Thanks for stopping by. If you feel like sharing one of your embarrassing moments, feel free to comment and we can have a laugh together. Check out all the fun posts from the other YA Storytellers here. Have a wonderful weekend! *waves* from Indonesia.

 

Clyde placed his murdering hand on the doorknob and took his

eyes