Today’s Daily Prompt “Isn’t Your Face Red” encourages us to write about the last time we were embarrassed and how we reacted.  Instantaneously my memory zoomed back to an event that was not the last time I was embarrassed but was one of the most mortifying experiences of my life.   I think it qualifies for this exercise.

Almost the worst part of this experience (and probably why it was so personally embarrassing) is the fact that I was the one who instigated the outing.  I happened to see a commercial for a show coming to the Denver Performance Art Center – “A Funny Thing Happened on the way to the Forum”.  In the commercial people were gushing about how funny the show was, how much they laughed, etc, etc, etc.  I thought to myself “Hey, that sounds like fun, let’s do it!”

Living in the Denver metro area, I’ve often chided myself for not taking  advantage more often of the world-class performance art and museums that are available.  Every time we venture to a show or an outing to a restaurant or event downtown we find ourselves wondering “Why don’t we don’t do this more often?” Since we have a group of friends who enjoy a good time as much as we do, we soon found ourselves on our way to dinner and the show with Dave & Lynn and their two young adult sons as well as Steve & Jeanie.

We could only get two blocks of tickets for four, so Redgie, Steve & Jeanie and I sat on one side of the theater and Dave & Lynn and their boys sat on the other.  And the show began…..

Shall I just say the humor was quite….um….”bawdy”?  You know, the kind that is filled with adultish innuendo and complete with courtesans sporting tassel-tipped nipples???  That’s pretty much all I can remember.

You have to understand….Dave & Lynn by this time were good friends of ours, but they were also my employers.  And Steve was on staff at our church.  I could feel the waves of embarrassment wash over me as the first half of the show plodded on.

To effectively complete this exercise I need to confide that my reaction to this embarrassing situation was to dash to the women’s restroom as soon as the lights came up at intermission! I hid in the farthest stall the whole entire intermission period.  I just knew that as soon as I could muster the courage to exit the restroom I would find the rest of the group waiting in the lobby so that we could leave without watching the second half of the show.  Imagine my surprise when I found them all still in their seats.  Redgie just asked “Where did you go for so long?”

Maybe I mis-judged everyone’s reaction to the show.  I figured Lynn would want to whisk her boys out of there as soon as possible, but every now and then I could hear Dave’s booming laugh across the theater. And Steve just kids me now and then about it, joking that I should not be allowed to orchestrate any more of our group outings.

That is just fine with me.

Photo credit to http://www.baystreet.org