Because I'm still busy finishing out the semester, I'm going to post some funny stories that I came upon while looking through old documents from college. This is from a paper I wrote for sociology in which we had to use sociology terms while writing our life stories...

Sixth grade was not the most significant year, but it was the year I learned what real embarrassment felt like. My friend C. and I were being silly one afternoon and decided to write a love letter to a boy I liked, R. We wrote the letter with the intention of slipping it in his locker. We signed the name Madonna on the letter so that he wouldn't know whom it was from. The next day at school, we waited in the hallway until no one was around and then stuffed the letter into his locker. Later in the day during English class, R., who sat in front of me, showed the letter to another boy. They both laughed and R. jokingly turned around and said to me "I bet you wrote this letter." Horrified, I quickly replied "No!" and looked away, fearful that I had turned bright red. Thankfully, R. turned back around and did not press the issue any further. However, later in the day when we both happened to be at our lockers, which were right next to each other, R. asked me, "Did you write that letter?" I didn't want to admit the truth, but was also aware that my profuse blushing had probably already given me away. I spotted a quarter in my locker and turned to R. and said, "Here, take this and don't tell anyone." R. walked away happily with my quarter, and I swore that I would never again write a secret love letter to anyone. My "paying R. off" is equivalent to fleeing an embarrassing situation that cannot be laughed off (Gross and Stone 125). The entire incident was embarrassing because I had lost control of my personal poise and had thus lost control of the situation: "Personal poise refers to the performer's control over self and situation, and whatever disturbs that control, depriving the transaction, as we have said before, of any relevant future, is incapacitating and consequently embarrassing" (128).

A funny story and a lesson on sociology!