Blogger: Debbie Arace – “Ray of Sunshine, Hope & Laughter”

I thought I’d switch it up a bit in this month’s blog by using my humorous approach to the situations I find myself in.  There are two keys that are essential on my key ring for life.  They are labeled: faith and humor.  Faith gives me comfort in life, and humor lessens the blows of life.  I never know where or when I may need them, so I carry them with me wherever I go.  They are like my American Express Card.  I never leave home without them.

One thing I’ve learned is that laughter has an incredible healing component.  Something takes place within that allows us to switch gears and soothe ourselves through the gift of laughter.  This is extremely helpful when you find yourself in potentially mortifying scenarios.

Warning: The content below is for entertainment purposes only.  The writer is not responsible for any mental images reader may have conjured up through their own vivid imaginations.  Anyone who thinks it’s TMI clearly has never read 50 Shades of Grey.

I think I’ll call this 50 Shades of Red (for embarrassment).

We’ve all had embarrassing moments in life when we just wanted to crawl under a rock and die.  Here are some of mine.  Believe it or not, most of them have to do with panties or lack thereof.  Enjoy and have a hearty laugh on me.

My first major embarrassing moment literally took me down.  I was around 21 at the time.  I had been in the shower when I heard the sound of the UPS truck.  Back then you had to sign for your packages or wait until another delivery attempt was made.  I was not waiting.  I rushed out of the shower, grabbed my silk floor length robe, zipped it up and ran for the door.  I lived on the second floor so I had a full flight of stairs to go down.  I could see the UPS guy standing behind the locked glass door smiling up at me.  As I started down the steps my foot got stuck in my robe. My eyes immediately locked with my UPS man’s eyes. I could see the concern on his face as he helplessly watched through the locked glass door my less than graceful decent.  Because my robe was silk and my body was wet I slid most of the way.  One by one, I went down on my butt and inch by inch, my robe made its way up my leg.  Never losing eye contact with this guy, I watched as his concern turned to horror, to shock, to holy crap, to I want to crack up but I can’t. Finally, my descent was complete and there I was robe up to my waist, legs wide open as though I were about to give birth.  Full commando.  Not knowing how to handle this intimate moment, I unlocked the door and found myself saying “special delivery”.  I’ll never forget the look on his face, as he handed me the package and bolted out of there.  I’m sure I was the topic of conversation around the UPS staff for a long time.  I only hope that he’s since recovered from any PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder) that may have occurred.

My next three embarrassing moments have to do with elastic.   I have a very ugly streak that is predominantly reserved for my hubby.  If things don’t go according to my plan, I go into ugly-mode where I rant, rave and use my truck driver’s mouth.  I don’t remember what caused me to unleash the beast but I did.  I now lived on the third floor of a house so I began my ranting in my apartment, continued down the two flights of stairs and out onto the streets.  I was stomping my way to the car, holding each of my kids by the hand, cursing up a storm.  Suddenly I felt something falling under my skirt.  The elastic had broken on my undies.  Not able to pull them up quick enough, and not wanting to lose my anger momentum, I decided to act fast.  I bent over, stepped out of them and swooped those suckers up without missing a beat of my rant.  Little did I know that I had an audience.   A few of the neighborhood “guys” were hanging out in front of the local Italian Club.  They were watching, and laughing at my whole tirade and it’s aftermath.  I’m not sure what amused them more my ranting, my bending over in a short skirt (once again unintentionally commando) or my capability to drop my draws, step out of them and proceed to yell, as though this embarrassing moment never phased me.  I think I heard one of them say:  “Don’t mess with her”.   If I were a male I think it’s safe to say that I would have earned my way to being a “made man”.

After that, I took all the necessary precautions to never drop my draws in public again.  I made sure elastic was intact.  In addition, I put pantyhose over panties topped by another pair of panties just in case the hose decided to ride down.  (I know, dumb idea, what about the top pair.  I wasn’t thinking top pair.  I was thinking no more winding up commando).   As far as I was concerned, I was well protected.  That is until I lost my g-string in church.

As I was getting secured for church, I noticed I was out of undies except for a Kelly green g-string that was part of a negligee set that my mother gave me as a gift.  I decided to put those on top of my pantyhose.  Little did I know that satin on top of nylon was not a good idea.  Being in church, there was a lot of up and down movement.  Each time I stood up I could feel something slipping down under my dress. As I stood moments before Communion, I felt the g-string at my knees.  Dear God, please, not here, not now,  what am I gonna do?  I decided to forego Communion and sit down.  I knew inquisitive eyes might wonder what I had done that made me refrain from Communion but at that point, I’d rather be judged than mortified.  Even my husband gave me a puzzled look.  I sat for the rest of the Mass and waited for it to clear out so I could remove my panties from around my knees.  Talk about baring yourself before God.  I was about to bare more than my soul.  lol. I turned around to see if the coast was clear and as luck would have it some people decided to stay and pray a while longer.  What was wrong with them?  I had a situation here that needed to be addressed.  How dare they pray when I had a g-string to remove.  My husband wanted to leave because he had to go to work.  If I stood up the people behind me would see my panties fall.  If I knelt down they might see under the pews what I was doing.  I opted to kneel and remove them.  I reached down and swooped them up in the palm of my hand.  A church friend of mine had been sitting behind me watching, wondering what was happening.  She came up to me and jokingly asked what mortal sin I committed that prevented me from receiving communion.   I slowly opened my hand to expose what I had inside.  “Is that a g -string”, she asked.  “Why yes, yes it is”, I replied.  I’m not quite sure what shocked her more the fact that I had been wearing a g-string or that I was able to gracefully accept this humiliating scenario.

My final embarrassing undie story has to do with being commando again.  I was alone at home, fresh out of the shower when I remembered I had forgotten to do something downstairs.  I grabbed my robe and made my way down the steps.  I had left a magazine on the second to last step and slid on it.  Down I went.  My right leg was stuck under my butt.  I carefully pulled it out from under and noticed that my foot was hanging off to the right.  I immediately went into humor mode by quoting a tv commercial that was popular at the time.  I started to laugh and say:  “I’ve fallen and I can’t get up”.   My only solution was to crawl into the other room on my butt without doing any more damage to my ankle, and reach up the wall for the phone.   Back then we had wall phones.  Lucky for me mine had a long cord so I was able to yank it off the wall.  Also lucky for me, the buttons were on the handset.  I called my husband to come home.  He was concerned that I needed immediate attention so he told me to call an ambulance.  I said I’d wait for him to come.  He called his parents and they rushed right over.  I had to now crawl from one end of the house to the other, with my foot hanging off.  I reached for the deadbolt and unlocked the door.  In walked Caterina and Veeduche, The Italian version of Archie and Edith Bunker.  Veeduche, being a butcher, took one look at my ankle and said:  “The situation itsa critical,  you breaka da bones”.  Caterina looked at me and said:  “Whya me, Kay cotts, whata you do, praya Jesus”.    My father-in-law said: “we gotta calla da ambulenca”.  I told my mother-in-law I needed to put on a pair of panties.  “Eh, why you no weara da panties when’s you fella yourself down”.  (I no weara da panties because I no no Ima gonna fella myself and have to explain to anyone why I no haves dem on.  that’s why). I asked Caterina to go upstairs and get them.  Big mistake.  Huge.  In more ways than one.  She goes up and all of a sudden I hear her say:  “Whya me, my poor son”.  I crawled back over to the steps, (I was good at it by now) looked up and saw her little Italian-self holding a pair of stretched out, worn out bloomers that she had found in the back of the drawer.  She was holding them out from one wall to the other (about a 3 1/2 feet wide.radius).  Of all the sexy panties I had, she decided to pick the bloomers that I use to stuff in tight shoes.  Here I am with a dangling foot and she’s concerned about my undies affect on her son.  What the…   I sent her back for the other ones and she said: “Thatsa better for my son”.  Good, I’ll make sure he wears them next week.  lol

My mile wide undies were only the beginning of my mortifying broken ankle experience.  I had torn and shredded all the ligaments in my right ankle on one side and broken the bone on the other side in two.  The doctors had to put Humpty Dumpty back together again with nuts, bolts, plates, and stitches.  I was not allowed to put pressure of any kind on my ankle what so ever.  I’d be in a hard cast that extended a little past my knee for a minimum of six weeks.  Great.  I now lived in a two-floor duplex.  I couldn’t go back there in my condition, so I decided to stay at my mother’s apartment because it was all one floor.  I had forgotten that there were two sets of steps I’d have to get up to get into her apartment.  How the heck was I gonna get into the building?  My mother and my husband couldn’t carry me up, and I didn’t know how to maneuver around.  My mother decides to go get her dining room chair and wait for passerby’s to help carry me up the stairs.  There I am, sitting on a dining room chair, right leg extended out, on the sidewalk of the Main Street in town.  Two strong men who took pity on me volunteered their services.  As if being carried up the steps on a dining room chair by total strangers wasn’t enough, it was being done on the Main Street of a small town where I could be recognized.  Recognized I was.  Horns began to honk, people were waving and calling out my name.  Me being mortified is an understatement.  I had to think fast.  When in Rome, do as the Romans do.  I went into queen-mode. I held my head high, raised my hand and gave anyone watching the royal queens wave.  (Not the finger, the actual slow wave). If I was gonna be humiliated I was doing it with class.

I survived getting into the apartment, but a couple of weeks later I had to leave to go get my ankle checked.  I didn’t know how I was gonna get to the doctors, so I decided to call an ambulette service.  I forgot to mention that I am a full figured woman.  At that point in time, this figure was at its fullest.  The reason I mention this is because when the ambulette arrived my mother came into her living room shaking her head from side to side.  She was followed by a tiny Asian man and his even smaller teenage son.  My right leg weighed more than the two of them put together.  They took one look at me and said uh, uh.  Then the father said it’s okay, I call for help.  He assures me help is on the way.  I figure he’s got some strong men on the way.  I figure wrong.  Help was his 4ft nothing petite little wife and his 80-year-old father who looked as though he was about to keel over.  They begin chatting in their native language and proceed to carry me down the steps in a wheelchair backwoods head first.  All I can see is the ceiling and all I can feel besides mortified is the back of my head hitting the steps one by one.  I pray to God that they don’t lose their grip.  I also pray that I don’t slip out of a chair that I’m not harnessed in. We all make it down the steps and out the door.  I am now sitting in the courtyard looking at the next flight of steps that lead to the main Street.  I am envisioning how I’m going to get through this one.  I can’t give the queens wave while I’m hanging head first in a wheelchair.  Not to worry.  They weren’t taking me down that way.  In fact, they weren’t taking me down at all.  They got in their van and sped away. At first, I thought they left to go get a stretcher to lay me on. Nope.  They dumped me.  There I sat, stranded in the courtyard.  Traumatized possibly for life.

With no way up and no way to the doctor, my mother decides to call 911.  The police arrive and they’re trying not to laugh at the predicament I’m in.  They call the fire department, the fire department calls EMS, EMS calls enforcement.  Two large strong, African American gentlemen arrive in one truck, and a slight gentlemen arrives in another.  The two strong guys let the slight guy know that they got this. They carried me to the ambulance as though I were as light as a feather.  Off I went to the doctor.  Now I have to get back to the apartment but at least I have the two Hercules guys.  No worries.  No more humiliation.  Right?  Wrong!  Outside, waiting for me stood the lone, slight man.  I asked where the two Hercules were and he informed me they were on another call.  Trying not to offend him I mentioned that I didn’t think he could man this task on his own.  I asked how he was planning to get up into the van.  He said he had an electric lift.  Wonderful.  How’s that lift getting me back into the apartment?  He lets me know he has back up waiting for my arrival outside the building.  Back up indeed.  There were ambulances, police cars, I think a crane and maybe even a helicopter.  The only thing missing was The Eyewitness News Van. As we pulled in front of the building an entourage of men surrounded me and proceeded to hoist me up like a baby grand piano and carry me up the two sets of steps were I was gingerly placed.  It was a most memorable day in the life of me.

If it wasn’t for my great sense of humor and my ability to laugh at myself, I think I would have died.  Being able to laugh at yourself softens the blow, and turns the most embarrassing moments into some of the best laugh out loud stories.  It allows you to have control over situations that are out of your control.

Hopefully, I have just made you laugh a little.  Maybe even taken the edge off of your own embarrassing moments.  Feel free to think of me next time you find yourself in an awkward situation.  Humor really is a magical thing.❤😉


bippic2019

Married 44 years to my hubby whose purpose in life is to prevent me from getting through the “Pearly Gates”.  Mother of two, Nanna of four loving granddaughters and retired secretary aka administrative assistant.  I went to the University of Hard Knocks where I received my Doctorate.  My thesis is titled:  How To Survive Life’s Trials Without Killing Yourself or Someone Else.  I live by the belief that when life throws you a curve, learn from it rather than use it against yourself.  Faith and humor are my survival kit.  Appreciate the simple things for they are the true treasures of life.

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