Brenna:

I don’t know the exact wording of the ‘old saying’ that I so carelessly used as the title of this post,  but I’m not too concerned because I assume you know what I mean. And there are countless  variations of this tired old saying. Commence eh vous…

I know that picture I posted on the side of this is impossibly small, but it’s crucial to the overall  message of the post so strain to see it. If that’s not working for you I will describe it; that is a picture of me. It was a class picture taken when I was in Grade Four. At that point in time, I was an innocent, young, careless little urchin with a quasi-’60’s bouffant and one front tooth. I remember the day our class got those pictures back. The horror I was stricken with when I realized how dumb I looked. Of course the Sadist that I mentioned in a pervious post (the one about Urban Dictionary if memory serves me correctly) seized this as his golden opportunity to inflict pain and misery into my otherwise careless life. He didn’t even say anything when he first looked at the picture. His beady eyes bugged out and he guffawed loudly and violently. Loudly enough to attract a throng of curious classmates around my humiliating picture. Which I am posting on the World Wide Web for some morbid reason.

So.

Doing the most logical thing in my 8 year old mind, I dashed to the bathroom and left my picture with Sadist child for more mockery. You can imagine I just cried my eyes out. I came out, collected myself and walked valiantly back to the classroom. Arg. Tear-stained face. By then Sadist child had had his fun, and he left my picture discarded on the desk. Bastard.

Anyways….

The main point of this post; sufferers of Social Anxiety- like myself -have a loathsome habit of over-analyzing past incidents. Except I take this to extreme new levels. I cannot for the life of me forget something stupid that I did/said/thought in Grade 2, 3, 4, 5…. I just can’t. I beat myself up about it. I have to sniffle, cough, sigh, and/or cringe to physically take my mind off of it. So I came to our trusty old blog to recount some of the most sinister moments of my life. Maybe this will help me forget about them. Who knows?

Valentines Tomfoolery

It is 2004- Valentines Day. We’re all indulging in Valentines Day festivities, eating cinnamon hearts, begrudgingly exchanging Valentines. Everybody’s having a jolly old time. Here I am, skulking at the back of he classroom, with my Valentines in a handle-tied A&P bag. I was not handing them out. What if… what if my classmates took one look at my Valentines, and laughed at them? What if they thought they were stupid? What if they thought I was stupid? Well! I couldn’t show myself in public after that horrible blunder, could I? Everyone having cool Power Rangers or Dragon Tales Valentines, and me having the lamest ones imaginable. So I stood there sobbing. My teacher, bless her heart (tee hee) forced me to hand them out, so I made my rounds around the classroom, briskly thrusting the Valentines at their designated classmate.

As if enough unnecessary attention wasn’t garnered throughout this burdensome ordeal, my teacher makes my classmates line up single file and tell me how cool my Valentines were. Honestly. Honestly?

The Incident where Meghan, myself and Little Kid made Idiots of Ourselves

Alright. Well you pretty much know the outcome of this cautionary tale. It’s 2007. Meghan and I are at the height of our fashion/supermodel phase. The phase in my life that haunts me the most with stupid things I’ve done. It’s the ‘Skip for the Hospital’. Wherein the school’s inmates congregate on the crumbling tarmac, skip (or whip each other with the skipping ropes) while lame music is played. Meghan, Little Kid & I had had enough of this, and we decided to have some alternative fun. We played supermodels. Oh. God. We did our best mock-over exaggerated- catwalk down the sidewalk, flailing our skipping ropes about. Potentially whipping or strangling unlucky passerby’s. But we weren’t just pretending to be  Heidi Klum (Irina Lazareanu in my case) we were shouting orders at each other as to what style of catwalk we should portray. Rather, I was doing the shouting. “Show me…. MARC JACOBS!”. Little Kid would strut down to the end of the sidewalk, throw herself down to the ground, flail about for a few brief moments, pick herself up and slither back to starting position. Assuming that’s what models did during a fashion show… as far as our knowledge went, they did. There are so many stupid incidents from the fashion model phase to recount here, but that’s just fodder for another post…

Misadventures with Quasi-Emo/Bisexual

Grade Eight. Sadist Kid had taken a liking to me (probably just to cross me off his list of girls he had yet to defile) and we had bonded over a morbid shared interest of mocking the school’s resident Quasi-Emo. Whee. So he’d rush up to me behind Quasi-Emo’s back back with new mockery material and we’d… well… mock him. ‘Cause I was so nice like that…

Except my jokes were unbelievably tired and lame. And I commenced with them. Under the grievously false illusion that they were funny. That’s where the humiliation came in. For example; I briefly called him, ‘The Bi-Guy’. See? DO YOU NOT SEE HOW DUMB THAT IS? Although I did apologize to Quasi-Emo. I received a rude stuck-out tongue. Ah well, that’s what I deserved.

Ass-Kisser

Last year. Me being unbelievably chipper when my teachers talked to me. May or may not be the reason why I ended the year with a 90% average. I hate people bragging about their marks, but I feel I deserved that.

AN-EY-WAYS: When I was young, Sister and I had a baby-sitter for the first time ever. Eager to impress her and not familiar with the expected customs of the baby-sat, I decided it would be entertaining for us all if I showed the baby-sitter a home-movie of Sister and I in our infant years. Which included a scene of Sister and I having a bath. And I’m showing this to a complete stranger. This would only be considered entertainment if the baby-sitter were a pedophile- which she so obviously was not.

Watching the Storm

2007- One of the rare times Meghan and I had gotten into a tiff. I was emotionally distraught, so I abandoned the class lesson (the teacher didn’t even notice. Typical.) and I took a soul-searching walk. Twenty steps to the outside of the school. As I stood there, inhaling a cleansing  breath, eyes glasses over with impending tears, I watched this threatening black cloud loom above me. Thinking this was a perfect dramatic movie-moment, and how the black cloud would represent my present circumstance. So G-Force (given moniker because this kid always wore the same black and gray velour sweater that said G-Force on it) came over, stared at me quizzically and asked, “What are you doing?”. I kept my glassy-eyed stare focused on the cloud, and without looking at him (so as to seem mysterious and deep) I replied in a stoic voice, “Watching the storm…”. He meandered back into the school. I thought I was so cool at the time but immediately after I realized how dumb I sounded.

So there you have it. Scenarios in my life that make me wince to think about them. That made me feel better. 6 down, only 978, 742, 776, 212, 700 to go. And I’m not bringing them all here.

-Brenna