Say Anything was the name of a popular column in the teen Magazine YM where young teenage girls wrote in and shared their most embarrassing, horrifying and mortifying moments. Often times these embarrassing moments happened in front of their crushes and often times they involved their periods. The horror!
Well perhaps you heard about a little mishap this week involving Christina Aguilera and her performance at Etta James’ funeral. If you haven’t heard, Ms. Aguilera was singing a tribute to Etta James when suddenly some brownish stuff starting running down her leg. Some speculate it was her period, others a self-tanning mishap. You can read about it here. Either way something was amiss. And either way what a terribly embarrassing and horrible moment to have caught on tape. A true Say Anything moment if ever there was one.
While I can’t say I’m a huge fan of Christina or her music, I am a fan of woman banding together and building each other up…especially when so many of us have been proverbially caught-in-the-spotlight with-some-brownish-stuff-running-down-our-leg. Am I right? So I emailed a bunch of my girlfriends and asked for their most embarrassing and mortifying moments to share with you all today in a YM style column.
This ones for you Christina! Chin up. It happens to the best of us.
Without further ado I present, Say Anything.
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–Before I start, it must be said that this story could have been horribly, terribly bad…but luckily it was only really bad. It was my junior year of high school. I had a really good guy friend who I hung out with a lot. While we were “just friends” there was always a bit of back and forth flirting, and underlying mutual crushes. We went out one night (I drove) and did a fair amount of driving around and hanging out before I eventually went to drop him off at his house. He invited me to come in, hang out and watch a movie–something we did often. Although I didn’t usually have a curfew, my mom had given me one that night and told me to be home early. Being the rebellious teenager I was, I usually would have just blown it off but, for some reason I felt like I should probably listen to her this time. I said good bye to my friend and started for home. On the way home I stopped at 7-11 for gas. After pumping my gas, I walked inside to pay for it and perhaps get something to eat. I was just wondering around, taking my sweet time. I remember thinking people were looking at me funny. Then I paid and walked back to my car. I passed a car full of teenagers watching me as I walked past and thought, “Seriously what is up? Why are they all staring at me?” As I got to the car it hit me…Oh no! Oh nononononono! I quickly turned around and in the reflection of my car I could see a gianormous red/brown blood stain on my behind. Like the size of my hand. Huge. Then I opened the car door and saw the upholstered seat soaked in blood! How I hadn’t noticed this before, I have no idea. My only defense was that I still wore pads quite often and we had been sitting in the car for a long time so maybe my bum went numb? I jumped in the care, sped home, RAN upstairs (hoping no one in my family was up), changed clothes, soaked my jeans and got back out to the car and scrub, scrub, scrubed that stain away. Luckily the car (my parents, not mine) came clean as did my jeans. After finally settling down in my room, I realized that while I had been humiliated at 7-11, in reality I had dodged a huge bullet. Had I gone into my friends house, to watch a movie the first thing I would have done, like I always did, was plop down on his parent’s nice, white couch. I thanked my lucky stars that I chose that night of all nights to follow the wise council of my wise mother.
–It was the end of my junior year in high school, and going along with tradition, my friends and I headed out to the beach for Memorial weekend. My big time major crush was there, and I was super excited when he suggested we go swimming in the ocean – so excited that I forgot that I had stashed a new tampon in the back of my bathing suit for later. It seemed like a good idea at the time. We were playing around in the water, just the two of us, and I remember he started talking about sometimes just wanting to be close to someone. So we got a little closer. And a little closer. And just when I thought he might kiss me, he said, “what’s THAT?” I looked, and just 3 feet away was this tampon floating by, thankfully in its wrapper, but still. Even though I played dumb, no one else was around so he had to know it was mine. Regardless, that dumb little tampon had already killed the mood.
–I have a light blue button up shirt. The fabric of this shirt has the unfortunate combination of no breathability and absorption, ie. enormous underarm sweat orbs. The second attempt at wearing the shirt, I ingeniously adhered maxi pads to the inside underarms. Ready to go. It’s the third hour of church when a kind woman taps me on the shoulder and whispers “I think something from the wash may have stuck to the inside of your shirt.” I know she’s referring to a shifted pad under my arm. Instead of explaining to her my ingenious sweat solution, I nod and head to the bathroom for assessment. The mirror shows the ENTIRE maxi pad has crept to my back, one hundred percent visible.
–8th grade, hours before school was actually dismissed I sensed something was wrong. Sure enough I had “leaked” all over my super faded 80s jeans. I saw no other alternative than to walk quickly out of the classroom with a book behind my butt, without saying anything to the teacher. The teacher must have known, I am guessing since I was not stopped and questioned…nor was there ever any mention of my absence from classes the rest of that afternoon. I had to ride my bike home…gross. Then I hid in my room the rest of the day. Nobody ever did say anything to me but I still wonder if anyone ever suspected what my “book camoflauge” meant or worse…if they saw the bright RED spots on my butt!
–It was one of those mornings where everything only gets half done. I was literally half-dressed (wearing a shirt but only undies on the bottom), but wanted to throw a dirty diaper out in the hallway garbage shoot ASAP because one of those things can stink up a NY one bedroom quicker than you can say “Jack Robinson”. I checked the hallway to make sure the coast was clear, left the door open a crack, and ran less than 6 feet across the hall to dispose of the unsavory item. As I turned back around to retreat back to the safety of my apartment, I saw my 2-year-old son with an evil gleam in his eye running for the door. Try as I might, I couldn’t get to the door before he slammed it in my face. It locked automatically, leaving me out in my apartment hallway in nothing but a shirt and my undies. I didn’t have pants, I didn’t have keys, but I did happen have my phone, so I quickly called my downstairs neighbor to see if she could run up our spare set. She said she wasn’t able to, but her husband could… You can imagine the shade of my face when he handed me the keys. I was mortified!
–It was the early 90s. I was just barely 14, celebrating the end of middle school with a trip to an amusement park with the entire 8th grade. While we were all running around like maniacs, flirting with boys and riding on roller coasters, I was also riding the “crimson tide.” At that point I had become confident in my ability to manage my business and wore my swimsuit and white boxer shorts from a friend’s bat mitzvah without a care. Late in the day, however, I went to the bathroom and was shocked to see that not only was there some leakage on my boxers, but because I had been on water rides the leak had spread out into a humongous light red circle that went to the bottom edges of my shorts. It was like I had painted a saddle red and then immediately straddled it in my white shorts. Fortunately I was prepared with lady supplies in my fanny pack (oh yes) and a back up pair of shorts that my friends ran to get from my locker. Since none of the girl friends I was running around with had noticed the stain, I convinced myself that maybe none of the other 200 kids from my 8th grade class had noticed either. A few days later, however, I developed my pictures, and saw this:
stain completely obvious, me completely oblivious
The questions finally began to flow like the crimson tide: When was this taken? How long was I running around like that? How many little red puddles did I leave for the person getting on rides after me? And most mortifying of all, how many of my crushes saw??? But as I look back now, with my huge hair and my blue fanny pack and my overall goofiness and my fakenstocks, my biggest question is, how did I have any friends?
Please, feel free to share your most embarrassing, humiliating and mortifying experiences in the comments. Solidarity sister!
*For obvious reasons most of the contributers wanted to remain anonymous. So to simplify I kept everyone, even myself, anonymous. 🙂
I'm crying because I'm laughing so hard! Thanks for giving me a tummy ache! My fav is the-pad-on-the-back-in-church. Love this idea of standing together! I'm going to ask my girlfriends to share their stories the next time we are together.ReplyCancel
AWESOME! I have a similar period-oops story, and with the passage of time it becomes less horrific. In fact, some day I might actually tell someone about it! It was only 15 years ago. No big deal.ReplyCancel
hahahaha. oh man. that last one with the photographic evidence is the best thing I've ever seen.
I had a "Say Anything" moment that involved blood … but from a bloody nose during a dark make-out that initially I interpreted as really wet kissing. I know.ReplyCancel
Linda P.February 2, 2012 - 9:18 pm
I needed some lighthearted entertainment today! Those stories were great! Oh man, then you had to go and tell us one of the stories was about you, and now I am going to die of curiosity!!!ReplyCancel
Yup, definitely had a Christina moment happen to me at a water park. I kind of miss YM… bringing all these embarrassed girlies together hahaReplyCancel
I used to send letters to a boy on a mission I dreamed would become my guy someday. In an effort to stand out from the many other girls who I knew wrote him, I decided to put a bunch of fall leaves from a hike I went on into his letter. By the next day an awful rash had spread over my body and begun to blister. At the end of the week, the doctor told me I had the worst case of poision ivy he'd every seen. And I'd sent it, priority mail, to my dream guy. Not only did he get poison ivy, but his companion also did. And since they were in Paraguay, where there was no poison ivy, the doctors tried all sorts of crazy medicine to help them get better. My letter explaining the poison ivy got lost on the way and showed up 4 months after the fact. Needless to say, we did not get married. And this is one of my less embarrasing stories.ReplyCancel
AnonymousFebruary 5, 2012 - 3:29 am
I was ten years old and my family and some of our friends were boating on a huge lake in southern Utah (I'm sure you know the one). Anyway, I REALLY needed to use the bathroom – and not the kind you can easily get away with in the water.
Instead of getting in the boat and telling my parents (like most ten year olds, I hated thought of interrupting our fun to head for a distant floating bathroom), I came up with a plan. Since I was already in the water, I decided to take care of business after my next crash. I quickly slid my one-piece to the side, and lot-te-da-de-da…
To my horror, I discovered that those little turds float. I frantically tried to splash the evidence away from me and then compose myself so that the people on board wouldn't be suspicious.
Thankfully, they passed and my dirty deed remained unnoticed. But, in the end, I know what happened and it remains my most embarrassing moment.ReplyCancel
oh man, these are hysterical! That last one, I laughed out loud multiple times. I think it was the picture that did me in. KILLER. The comment stories were great too. poop floats! ha ha.
I'm crying because I'm laughing so hard! Thanks for giving me a tummy ache! My fav is the-pad-on-the-back-in-church. Love this idea of standing together! I'm going to ask my girlfriends to share their stories the next time we are together.
Love this, too funny.
This post exceeded my highest expectations… I am still laughing out loud!!!!
AWESOME! I have a similar period-oops story, and with the passage of time it becomes less horrific. In fact, some day I might actually tell someone about it! It was only 15 years ago. No big deal.
hahahaha. oh man. that last one with the photographic evidence is the best thing I've ever seen.
I had a "Say Anything" moment that involved blood … but from a bloody nose during a dark make-out that initially I interpreted as really wet kissing. I know.
I needed some lighthearted entertainment today! Those stories were great! Oh man, then you had to go and tell us one of the stories was about you, and now I am going to die of curiosity!!!
Tamra–please share.
Bex—oh. My. I don't have words… Would love to know the details (like who?)….awesome.
Linda–I know right? Suspenseful.
Yup, definitely had a Christina moment happen to me at a water park. I kind of miss YM… bringing all these embarrassed girlies together haha
I used to send letters to a boy on a mission I dreamed would become my guy someday. In an effort to stand out from the many other girls who I knew wrote him, I decided to put a bunch of fall leaves from a hike I went on into his letter. By the next day an awful rash had spread over my body and begun to blister. At the end of the week, the doctor told me I had the worst case of poision ivy he'd every seen. And I'd sent it, priority mail, to my dream guy. Not only did he get poison ivy, but his companion also did. And since they were in Paraguay, where there was no poison ivy, the doctors tried all sorts of crazy medicine to help them get better. My letter explaining the poison ivy got lost on the way and showed up 4 months after the fact. Needless to say, we did not get married. And this is one of my less embarrasing stories.
I was ten years old and my family and some of our friends were boating on a huge lake in southern Utah (I'm sure you know the one). Anyway, I REALLY needed to use the bathroom – and not the kind you can easily get away with in the water.
Instead of getting in the boat and telling my parents (like most ten year olds, I hated thought of interrupting our fun to head for a distant floating bathroom), I came up with a plan. Since I was already in the water, I decided to take care of business after my next crash. I quickly slid my one-piece to the side, and lot-te-da-de-da…
To my horror, I discovered that those little turds float.
I frantically tried to splash the evidence away from me and then compose myself so that the people on board wouldn't be suspicious.
Thankfully, they passed and my dirty deed remained unnoticed. But, in the end, I know what happened and it remains my most embarrassing moment.
oh man, these are hysterical! That last one, I laughed out loud multiple times. I think it was the picture that did me in. KILLER. The comment stories were great too. poop floats! ha ha.
I TOTALLY remember this column in YM.