The invitations to a recent New Yearâs Eve party came with an assignment. Guests were to bring a written description of their most embarrassing moment, with no identification. These narratives were to be shuffled, handed out and then read aloud to the group. Guests were to attempt to identify the writer of each account. Names and some details were edited to protect the innocent and avoid obvious tip-offs. My entry went something like this:
It was the first spring Saturday that the grass was high enough to mow. I slept in, as high schoolers will do, but I had not forgotten my obligation to brandish the electric mower over the lawn, trying not to run over and cut the cord. Again.
Afterward, I showered and remembered a promise to take my grandmother grocery shopping. I also remembered to allow some extra time to duck in the office at our church for a youth group mimeographing chore, due before the Sunday evening meeting.
A similar debate-team task could wait until later in the week, but another school chore could not. Mr. Wicks, in the Kavanaugh location now selling high-end cupcakes, was altering matching green, black and yellow madras shorts for an upcoming performance of our Key Club quartet, in which I sang bass. Our leader, Johnny Roberts, had tasked me with remembering to check daily on the progress of those alterations. And I always did what Johnny told me to do. Still do.
Try as I would, I could not forget that I had a major English paper due in 10 days. In a flight of intellectual pretension, I had chosen to compare and contrast the comic characters of Falstaff and Don Quixoteâs sidekick, Sancho Panza. The challenge was to produce a credible paper without actually reading a long novel and a couple of plays. Tricky. Maybe spending a part of Sunday afternoon in the coolness of the columned and paneled library at 7th and Louisiana would inspire me.
Just after supper, I remembered to stop in at the Forest Heights service station and fill my motherâs newish Ford Falcon with 25-cents-a-gallon gasoline. As I pumped, something unremembered skittered at the edge of my consciousness. But, what?
When I walked in the house a few minutes later, my mother told me that Jayme Sue had called (on a black Bakelite non-cellular telephone, of course) to see if I was âall right.â Jayme Sue! My friend and sometimes sweetheart, in junior high, high school and even into college! We had made a date for that evening â” several weeks before, for some reason â” and I had forgotten it! Oh, the humiliation!
Well, no, actually. My forgetfulness certainly did not dent Jayme Sueâs self-image â” she was, after all, Miss Little Rock. And being the big-hearted, together person that she was and is, she was not offended or insulted. Rather, she found my lapse amusing and entirely in character. We rescheduled the date and what could have been a truly embarrassing moment instead became a fond memory.