putting the 'ass' in embarrassment
a broken tooth helps your girl understand something about the emotion nightmares are made of
Two truths and a lie:
On Monday, I broke a tooth on an olive pit.
On Wednesday, I almost fainted in public.
On Thursday, I forgot I signed up for a class and showed up to the final unprepared and completely naked.
As a 38 year old (almost 39! this month! yay May!) woman, we can obviously choose number three as the lie, albeit an ubiquitous dream (nightmare?) that most Type-A folks have had at one point in their adult life.
But wait, doesn’t this mean… YES. My darling friends, this week I experienced the first two incidents—leaving me feeling bereft with that same feeling from the ubiquitous “I’m naked and unprepared in public” dream—embarrassment.
On Monday, I bit down on a pitted olive while yapping with my man and by bestie over oysters, frites, and martinis. It was a rare, well-timed Monday evening hang at my fave Seattle café Good Voyage with some ill-advised chomping, apparently. The crack of my molar reverberated across the table, like a screech in a record. All six of our eyes widening at once.
I kept repeating, “I’m okay, I’m okay, I’m okay,” which I was, but then the next day, I wasn’t, and now I am again. I continued on with that evening, part of my tooth hanging on like a rifted iceberg ready to be released into the cold waters.
For the next 36 hours, my tongue continued to rub against the vertical crack—no pain, just irritant—just ready for it to bob up and down before splashing its way to the arctic void. A fresh and foreign reminder of the bone-headed (pun intended) stunt I pulled Monday night.
Wednesday morning, I drag myself, pre-coffee, to a 7 am dentist appointment. My night owl disposition cringed, but my anxiety fueled my resolve. My time in the chair went about as you would expect: explanation of the tooth break, xrays, silly small talk with hygienist, cleaning (why not?), more silly small talk with dentist, dentist poking around, etc. He gave me decently good news. No extraction needed! No root canal needed! We can do a crown! Hooray!
But what about the pain? What about the tip of the iceberg ready to break off? No problem, I’ll just pull the broken bit now. Oh thank god. Apparently this bit was hanging on by gum threads (literally, and also ew!). He numbs my gums, tries once, twice, and on the third time yanks the tooth bit with a revolting velcro sound. My anxiety, which until this point had been a mild and steady companion, immediately spiked, along with adrenaline, of course. I bled for just a minute or two while he continued on, business as usual, about the treatment plan.
Any pain relief I felt in my mouth was countered with shaky nerves coursing through my body. I hadn’t eaten breakfast (hello, 7 am appointment time, remember?), nor had I had any coffee. So, when I stood up from the chair, it didn’t occur to me that my lightheadedness was anything other than a reminder to eat a damn croissant. By the time I walked through the office to the front desk, though, my vision blurred, my face flooded with involuntary tears, and my hands shook—holy sh*t, I thought, I am 3 seconds away from passing out. I reach for my hygienist and mumble something like OHNOI’MCRASHINGFROMTHEADRENALINE.
The next twenty minutes was a flurry for the office staff—the hygienist (god bless) ushered me to the dentist’s personal office and sat me at his computer chair, and three different hygienists carouseled into the room to give me water, tissues, and an encouraging word. The dentist himself checked on me three times—is this lawyer lady going to sue me? written all over his face.
Despite the traumatic event, I wasn’t litigious—I had no desire to even pretend jokingly that I was considering it. And, I didn’t end up actually passing out. After twenty minutes of deep breathing, and apologizing for making a scene, I scheduled my follow up and got the hell out of dodge.
When I got to my car, it hit me—that wonderfully mortifying realization that I was embarrassed.
You may be wondering why this was a mortifying realization. Honestly, I haven’t felt true embarrassment in very long time. It’s not to say that I don’t experience, regularly, things that other folks might get embarrassed about—I trip on the sidewalk, I mispronounce words, I think cashmere is a type of cotton, I identify the wrong band singing a very well known song, I spill coffee on my white tshirt, etc. etc.
None of those things make me embarrassed. They certainly make me laugh—tripping in public is hilarious, confusing Joni Mitchell with Carly Simon is perplexing, and spilling anything on clothing is par for the course for a graceful b*tch like myself. My self-confidence and not taking myself so seriously serve me well…usually. Perhaps I was due for a truly embarrassing chain of events to test the limits of this obvious middle-school-bullying-trauma-response coping mechanism. And, haha, L O L—this week was a heavy dose of those events! Between the initial tooth break heard around the world, and the almost face planting at the front desk of a dentist’s office—wouldn’t you feel embarrassment?
For that matter, what exactly is embarrassment as a fully realized and functioning adult? I have a 401(k) for god’s sake, and I still feel the emotion of embarrassment? IN THIS ECONOMY? Excuse me while I scoff at myself and dramatically roll my eyes.
Let’s go to Merriam Webster, because I didn’t lose an ounce of nerdiness in this week’s bout of embarrassment (huzzah!):
embarrassment (noun):
an excessive quantity from which to select—used especially in the phrase embarrassment of riches; or
the state of being embarrassed: such as (a) confusion or disturbance of mind; “couldn't hide her embarrassment;” or (b) difficulty in functioning as a result of disease; “cardiac embarrassment.”
embarrassed; embarrassing; embarrasses (as a transitive verb):
(a) to cause to experience a state of self-conscious distress; or (b) to place in doubt, perplexity, or difficulties
In picking my poison, I’m poison either way with these definitions. Embarrassment of riches? Check! Breaking a tooth on a fancy little martini olive in a fancy little outfit at a fancy little café with my fancy little friends certainly constitutes an embarrassment of fancy little riches—champagne problems, or something adjacent.
Difficulty in functioning as a result of disease? Not exactly, but kind of, right? “Adrenal(ine) embarrassment”?
Confusion or disturbance of mind? Experiencing a state of self-conscious distress?? Now there’s the sweet spot. It’s where my mind recognizes the road signs—we’ve been here before, this must be the place.
Embarrassment is such an early, formative feeling as an adolescent human. It’s a common human sensation to feel, at some point, self-consciousness, confusion, and disturbance of mind. As a teen, that sensation was a heightened version permeating my thoughts upon anything happening to me that could potentially set me apart. This particular brand of embarrassment isn’t necessarily unique to Millennial women, but it certainly is somewhat of a zeitgeist struggle that Millennials faced in their formative years. Just watch 10 Things I Hate About You or any other late 90s, early 00s high school movie.
(of Be There In Five podcast fame) talks a lot about the Millennial struggle on avoiding, at all costs, being “othered.” In grade school, we didn’t have social media or magazines telling us to embrace our differences. The conversations, at least in my very conservative and mostly white high school, lacked intersectionality and diverse input (embarrassingly). Instead we were called to fit in with the cis-het white norm—be thin, be tan, be blonde, be docile, be positive, be mainstream. Knock-off Abercrombie polos could earn you some heartbreaking ridicule—cardiac embarrassment of a different type.
So, again, why am I, a 38 year old privileged white female, sitting here on a gorgeous sunny spring day feeling embarrassed by a broken tooth/almost fainting episode? Because I’m human. Because I, apparently, still need reminding that I am still sometimes that dumbass adolescent. And, most importantly, putting the “ass” in embarrassment is actually quite funny, and I’m so grateful to be in a place where I can (eventually) see the humor and ridiculousness of it all.
P.S. Stop scrolling now if vague dental images freak you out. But, in my hazy light-headed stupor, I did manage to take a photo of the tip of the tooth iceberg medievally extracted from my mouth. And, I told the hygienist I’d be wearing it in a vial on a necklace like Mary Shelley. It’s in a ziploc in my purse—a talisman to ward off future embarrassment, or at least getting to the giggles just a little bit quicker.
