Commentary

Children know Mom holds her own embarassments
Cheryl-Anne Millsap says she has stories from her own childhood that help put her self-conscious offspring at ease.

Cheryl-Anne Millsap

Some mothers comfort their children with Band-Aids or homemade cookies.

I have another tool in my medicine bag.

I pull out one of my embarrassing stories. And I've got one for every occasion.

When my third-grader came home from school embarrassed because she stuck her feet in the aisle and accidentally tripped the teacher, I was ready.

"Oh, That's nothing," I said. "Did I ever tell you about the time I slugged my principal?" That got her attention.

When I was in the fourth grade, my teacher asked me to run an errand for her. Feeling important, I flew up the stairwell, head down, fists tight, arms pumping furiously. At the same time my principal was hurrying down the stairs on an errand of his own.

We met in the corner of the stairwell. My swinging left fist landed a solid blow (a solid "below the belt" blow) to the body of my principal. He exhaled with a high-pitched "woof" and made a reflexive gesture to protect what had, unfortunately, already been hit.

In the millisecond it took my brain to register what I had just done, my feet never stopped moving. I rocketed up the rest of the stairs, skidded into my classroom, and into my desk, to wait for the call to the office.

For days I expected to be told that in addition to the crime of running indoors, the charge of "punching the principal in the privates" had been added to my permanent record. My life was over.

Fortunately, the call never came because he never knew what hit him. I was able to go on to college and a career without that stain on my record.

When my older children moved on to high school and worried that they might do something (anything) embarrassing, I was able to set the bar so high that they relaxed.

As a painfully shy freshman, I endured an hour each day sandwiched between two football-playing class clowns in my English literature class. One sat in front of me, and the other to my left, and all I wanted was to just stay out of the line of fire.

One day, drugged by the warm room and the incessant droning of the teacher, I fell asleep, using my open book as a pillow.

When the teacher called my name several times, the last time loud enough to wake me, I sat up, or tried to sit up, but my long hair was caught between my desk and the desk of the boy in front of me. Startled, I cried out in pain.

The boy in front of me turned around to see what was going on, and his desk moved just enough to release my hair. When I put my hands up to my stinging scalp, my elbow knocked the heavy book off the left side of my desk and onto the floor.

Intent on getting things back to normal as quickly as possible, I bent to pick up the book and instead slammed my forehead down onto the desk of the boy sitting beside me. The class sat in stunned silence.

I was just stunned.

So much for being invisible.

Fortunately, the boys weren't fast thinkers, and since the whole performance lasted less than a minute, they were caught off guard.

My teacher stared at me, her mouth a perfect "O," until the bell rang and I made my escape.

Although it terrifies my children to know they share the same DNA as a human lightning rod for disaster, I think it comforts them to think I might have already had the worst experiences they can imagine. They think of me as the tallest tree in the forest of bad luck.

Of course, you know what they say about little acorns. ... Now that my daughter is in college and facing the challenges of campus life, the time may be right to share my college story about the giant hot-dog costume, the elevator and the fire alarm. Or, maybe not.

But, when she needs me, I'll be there, and we'll have a nice long talk.