And now we continue on with the "Top 10 Most Embarrassing Moments" countdown (if you’re late, skip down one post to #6-10), Part II

5) The time I tried to take a nap at school
Truth be told, there’s nothing inherently funny about this particular embarrassing moment. I don’t look back on this one and laugh. The closest I can get to funny is awkward, and this represents perhaps the single most awkward five minutes of my life. If I propositioned a prostitute in the parking lot of my church in full view of the exiting congregation this very Sunday it wouldn’t be this awkward unless the prostitute turned out to be a guy and the guy dragged me out of my car and beat me up. Even then it would only be as awkward. Anyway, I’m just saying, this isn’t funny.

So, it’s my senior year and as a reward, a bunch of the juniors got to cut class to help decorate for the senior prom. When I got to the gym with the other 200+ juniors we were all loosely assigned to a task. I have no idea what mine was – making fake treasure chests or something – but it became apparent pretty quickly there were way too many people for the handful of jobs that needed to be done. Quickly making one of the least logical decisions of my life (and that’s really saying something), I decided I’d slip into one of the gym offices and take a nap. Why, I have no idea. It’s not like I was going to catch a two-hour nap. At best I’d have laid somewhere for two hours constantly worrying about getting caught. It didn’t take nearly that long, fortunately.

The first office I looked in was empty and was attached to the boys locker room. I assume this was the basketball coach’s office, who I’d never met before. I looked around the locker room. No one home. Looked back out into the gym. No one coming. Then I decided I’d just slide down between the desk and the wall to catch some zzzz’s. I should mention that the side of the desk I was on was the side where the person would sit. So IF I’d fallen asleep and IF the coach had come back, he’d had tripped over me sitting down in his chair. How would I even explain why I was sleeping on his floor? It’s like I’d spent the morning huffing paint or something. About the time I came to my senses, the coach came in with another student. As I peered up over the desk, the coach saw me and said something to the effect of “What in the hell are you doing on the floor behind my desk?” If I’d been a magician I suppose I could’ve thrown one of those smoke bombs on the floor at his feet and disappeared. If I’d been a professional wrestler I could’ve thrown either salt or fire (whichever I was hiding in my trunks) in his eyes and suplexed him or something. I was neither of those things so I just stood there completely unable to formulate any kind of coherent excuse. I think I said something about not feeling well, which he bought about as much as a hobo would buy a brand new Mercedes. He threatened to kick my ass back to class and I skulked back out into the gym with my face as red as a stop sign. My brain still likes to take that sequence of events out and fondle it from time to time like it’s a rubix cube that can be solved if I just think about it long enough. Here’s a tip, brain: stop wasting your time because there’s no explanation for this one.

4) The many, many times I spent talking about He-Man
You might be interested to know I played Division III soccer my freshman year of college. I’d have played all four years, but I transferred to a school without a soccer team. Not too bad for a kid that didn’t start playing organized soccer until the 5^th grade, huh? You might also be interested to know that before I started playing soccer on the mean playgrounds of East Heights Elementary I spent recesses with my best friend, Barrett Goodman, walking around the soccer field over and over talking about He-Man while every other boy in our class played soccer. We talked about He-Man the way Chris Matthews talks about politics. Like Warren Buffet talks about money. If talking about He-Man made you taller, I’d be the single biggest reason the NBA decided to change over to 15-foot rims. I’d have led the league in blocked shots every year since my rookie season. I’d accidentally block my teammates’ shots by walking in front of the rim. “And there’s another block!” one announcer would say. “Wow, he’s a behemoth!” the color guy would say. “I think that shot hit him in the thigh” they’d both agree. Anyway, at some point I guess I kicked Barrett to the curb to give soccer a try, but for that glorious year and a half we were passionately in love with six-inch, impossibly muscular, plastic, action figures, most of which wore loin cloths. Remind me again how I didn’t end up gay?

Note: From the “You-Could-Never-Get-Away-With-This-These-Days” file, we used to divide up the soccer teams by playing blacks versus whites. Amazingly, every one was ok with this. We’d just split up and play soccer. I’m not sure if that’s a good thing or a bad thing, but no one seemed to mind.

3-2) The two times I made an ass of myself trying to run fast
I cannot run fast. Not now, not ever, really. I always had moderate speed on the soccer field. As I got older I started to learn when to apply some tactical speed, but strictly speaking, I’m not much of a sprinter the way Jamaicans really aren’t bobsledders. Unfortunately I did not come to this realization until much too late in life.

In grade school, I was still convinced that I was faster than any girl simply based on genetic superiority. One day I challenged a girl in my class who was considered fast to a foot race. I should preface this story by letting you know this particular girl, Leslie Hay, went on to win several state track titles. And in case you’re wondering, she didn’t just get really fast all of a sudden. No, she was fast in 4^th grade. Like, Scooby-Doo-running-from-a-ghost fast.

She gladly accepted my challenge and proceeded to absolutely annihilate me. We raced 30 yards and back twice. She beat me both times by roughly 15 feet. On the second attempt she began taunt me as she to coasted to another easy win. Her friends laughed at me. My friends laughed at me. I think I remember saying I’d be much faster if I didn’t have on jeans, but the truth that was painfully obvious to everyone but me was that Leslie could’ve run underwater in one of those old-timey copper scuba suites with the big round helmet and she still would’ve beaten me by two steps.

The second time I made an ass of myself while running was the very next year. I hadn’t gotten any faster, but somehow I had the 20^th best time of any male 5^th grader in the 40-yard dash. So, field day rolled around and it was time for the 20 fastest kids to race one another to determine the overall fastest 5^th grader. I jogged over to the starting line with 19 other kids and we all took our place on the starting line. I’m remember I was wearing jeans again. It’s hard to run fast in jeans, especially if you’re already slow to begin with. I felt like I was trying to run with rolled up carpets wrapped around my legs. There’s a reason world-class sprinters don't run in denim. Anyway, someone blew a whistle and everybody took off. I ran like I had on 30-lb. ankle weights on. At some point I actually fell down. No one saw it because by that point I was well behind everyone else. Apparently one of the officials must’ve had a stroke during the first race because he or she convinced the other officials that I’d have done much better if I hadn't fallen down. So we raced again. And I finished dead last again. Only this time I had a huge grass stain on my Bugle Boy jeans. Thankfully, there was no reprieve and I walked away with a ribbon for participating, like a dog that takes a dump on the Astroturf at the Westminster.

1) The time I farted in class
You know how you have memories from your childhood that you wonder how much actually happened and how much you’ve just sort of mentally filled in over time? Well, this is not one of those kinds of stories. Every ounce of this story is 100% true. Except for the date and what I was wearing, I can remember every other detail about this moment exactly as it happened. I was in 8^th grade French class. Mr. Gilmour was my teacher. He looked a little like Gargamel from the Smurfs, but he was nicer.

I was sitting in his French class when, due to some freakish colon spasm, I may have allowed a little bit of noxious gas to silently escape my anal cavity. The smell clung to me immediately, the way a Russian child frantically clings to a parent being dragged away by the KGB. I swear, if my pants had been made entirely of Glade plug-ins I couldn’t have begun to fight the smell. The stench of sulfur and eggs gone bad was so powerful, though, that it began to permeate the general vicinity. It was out there and it was eye-wateringly strong.

So, I’m sitting there calculating how many people are close enough to the smell to potentially share the blame when a strange thing happened: people started moving. The people seated around me left their seats and moved to the back of the room as though drawn by some invisible force promising fame, fortune and fresh air. Mr. Gilmour actually stopped in the middle of the lesson to watch the four or so people who just moved to the back of the room leaving me sitting by myself. And then he looked at me and here’s what I said: “I don’t smell anything”…pause…”oh wow, yes I do” and I moved to the back of the room also. Very, very smooth. I’m sure my denial was as convincing as O.J.’s.