{"id":3256,"date":"2010-09-10T14:53:32","date_gmt":"2010-09-10T18:53:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lifeasprayer.wordpress.com\/?p=3256"},"modified":"2015-07-26T17:14:47","modified_gmt":"2015-07-26T22:14:47","slug":"shame-poking-out-your-eye","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lisadelay.com\/blog\/shame-poking-out-your-eye\/","title":{"rendered":"Shame and wanting to poking out your own eye"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

There’s a feeling you can get, after you’ve done something horrible. It’s so bad, that you might consider poking your own eye out (if for nothing else than a viable distraction.)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\"\"<\/a>My first job (besides babysitting) was as a hostess at Eat’n Park Family Restaurant. A woman about 10 \u00a0years older transferred there. She had been a waitress for a long time (even a decorated<\/em> one. Yes, Eat’n Park is special like that.) She also<\/span> had the name “Lisa,” just like me. That’s about all the ingredients needed for good communication and lasting friendship, right? um. No.<\/div>\n
Background:<\/em><\/div>\n
Sometimes I’d goof off and crack jokes in passing with Lisa. No big deal. (If you know me, this is all highly typical behavior.)<\/div>\n
WELL-<\/div>\n
One day, like a stoke of non genius<\/strong>, it came into my head to wisecrack when I noticed Lisa had a blue pen scribble on her forearm. I noticed it was actually a very sloppily rendered mark of her own name. The “L” was super long on the bottom, and not in a cursive way. It was just odd. It struck me as humorous. I already knew she had a 4 year old daughter. Her little girl had probably been playing with her waitressing pen and wrote out her mom’s name all by herself. Or maybe Lisa had done it\u2013for a joke,<\/strong> or because she was bored. So, feeling my comic Einstein vibe coming on me (which is inversely proportionate to my rational thought and good judgment), I said\u2013rather flippantly, I might ad\u2013“Hey, what’s that on your arm? Is that so you don’t forget your name?”<\/strong><\/div>\n

\n<\/strong><\/div>\n
Sudden. Dead. Powerful stare.<\/div>\n
Awkward pause. I could hear a spider near the salad bar blink.<\/strong><\/div>\n
Then I noticed she had a sort of sad “How could you, you freaking jerk?” look on her tired face. (I picked up on that because I’m really good at feeling people out!)<\/div>\n
It was a tattoo.<\/strong><\/div>\n
A horrible one. <\/strong><\/div>\n
A mistake.<\/strong><\/div>\n
Perhaps a drunk boyfriend or trashed stepdad scrawled it there. Who knows. But whatever the story was, it was part of a painful past. A past she did not want thrown in her face by some stupid and insensitive quip from a dumb teenager.<\/div>\n
My heart froze with panic.<\/strong> It’s the kind of panic where you start to smell yourself. A\u00a0cold sweat mustache erupts on your lip usually, too<\/div>\n
.<\/div>\n
Would she stab me with a steak knife?<\/strong><\/div>\n
Plan to burn me “accidentally” with a scrod<\/a><\/strong> entr\u00e9e platter? (Wicked hot, they are!)<\/strong><\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
I fumbled around, and got out, “um… hahah… I’m just kidding.” I was trying desperately to appear nonchalant. I considered whistling a tune to prove it.<\/strong><\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
Still, she just looked at me\u2013steadily.<\/div>\n
“I’m sorry,” <\/strong>I said, getting up the nerve. It felt like a blanket of shame washed over me. Self-loathing\u2013all over the place.<\/strong><\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
She shook it off, and went back to work. From then on I tried to be extraordinary nice to her, in every way I could think of. I bused her tables, and got her refreshing beverages, and tried to be as pleasant, and positive as I could. She didn’t hold it against me, beyond a day or so.<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
Once, after a 10p.m.-5 a.m. shift when my dad failed to pick me up, she even drove me home in her weary beater of a car.<\/div>\n
I still wonder about her.<\/div>\n
It was poke-your-eye-out shame.<\/div>\n
I’ll never forget it.<\/div>\n

Have you ever had “inner death by shame”? <\/strong>(you can just answer yes or no, unless you want to be brave and tell your story)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A Terrible Shame: (My story) When wisecracking proves your an idiot.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5626],"tags":[3,315,4985,5296,4378,372,484,4541,4495,765,5199,913,4665,927,5903,1038,1052,1117,1190,1222,24,4374,1373,1426,1503,1604,1672,1698,6538,4716,1763,1858,1871,1873,1891,4081,5645,1956,2046,2050,3840,2238,2245,2349,2367,6444,2470,2521,2559,5845,4079,6265,2944,3015,3054,5500,5855,4859,3257,3322,3353,82,5413,3444,6004,4597,3725,3735,89],"class_list":["post-3256","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-spark-my-muse","tag-fail","tag-babysitting","tag-bad","tag-bar","tag-be","tag-behavior","tag-brave","tag-car","tag-cold","tag-communication","tag-crack","tag-daughter","tag-dead","tag-death","tag-distraction","tag-dread","tag-drunk","tag-employment","tag-eye-poking","tag-family","tag-fear","tag-feeling","tag-friendship","tag-genius","tag-good","tag-heart","tag-home","tag-hostess","tag-humor","tag-if","tag-in","tag-job","tag-joke","tag-jokes","tag-judgment","tag-just","tag-kind","tag-lame-jokes","tag-lisa","tag-lisa-the-waitress","tag-mistake","tag-mistakes","tag-mom","tag-nice","tag-not","tag-old","tag-panic","tag-people","tag-picked","tag-positive","tag-right","tag-sad","tag-salad","tag-self-loathing","tag-shame","tag-smell","tag-special","tag-start","tag-story","tag-sweat-mustache","tag-tattoo","tag-tattoos","tag-teenager","tag-time","tag-tired","tag-weary","tag-wisecracks","tag-wonder","tag-work"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lisadelay.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3256","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lisadelay.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lisadelay.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lisadelay.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lisadelay.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3256"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/lisadelay.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3256\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16300,"href":"https:\/\/lisadelay.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3256\/revisions\/16300"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lisadelay.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3256"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lisadelay.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3256"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lisadelay.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3256"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}