Top 10: Blonde Moments

Here is a list of my top 10 "blonde" moments. Please do not judge...whether you admit it or not, we ALL have them. These are my favorite thus far....

10. When I was a freshmen in High School, we were all assigned an English term that we had to teach to the class in an interesting way. My group got the word hyperbole.

As a brief refresher, a hyperbole, according to the ever-so trustworthy Wikipedia, is "a figure of speech in which statements are exaggerated."

I forget how exactly our group chose to teach this term to our fellow students. However, I do remember very well that the other 2 guys in my group were deadbeats and decided that I should do all the work for it.

Being the nice gal that I am, I went along with it on one condition. One of them would have to do most of the talking in front of the class. Public speaking, for me, has always been an absolute nightmare. I get a dry throat, which makes me feel as though I'm going to vomit any second. I start pacing back and forth in my mind and try to memorize exactly what I'm going to say over and over in my head. Then, once I get up in front of a group of people, whether it's only 2 or 20 or 200, I inevitably forget what I'm about to say and stutter all over my words making it completely impossible for anyone to understand what the hell I am talking about.

That being said, you can imagine my hesitation when I found out 5 minutes before our presentation, my dead beat group "partners" had changed their minds and decided that I was also going to present the whole project.

Oh God. I'm going to hurl....

So we get up there. I take a deep breath and I look at my loving classmates. I had known all of these people for years, some of them since kindergarten. It was no big deal right? Right. So...here it goes....

I open my mouth....

Silence.

I try again...

Nothing.

And then, I guess to help me along, my teacher asked us what our term was.

Yea! I know the answer to that one. So I blurted out...

"Hyper-bowl! Our term was hyper-bowl!"

And yes....that's exactly how I said it. I said it as though this fictitious bowl needed to be on ritalin....what the hell?

(For those of you who didn't catch it, the word phonetically is pronounced "hye-PER-bə-lee".)

My teacher was so nice though. She just smiled and corrected me gently but not at the expense of all the other students who were giggling and laughing and pointing....

I know they thought I was an idiot. But somehow I made it through the rest of the presentation. This was only the beginning of a long slew of embarrassing moments when it came to public speaking.

9. Andrew and I play this game often where one of us will ask the other a trivia question. It's usually while we're taking one of our infamous road trips and we're just trying to keep things interesting. These trivia questions are usually movie, t.v. or music related but sometimes we'll stump each other with a history or sports question.

(OK. Let's be honest, we all know that I know absolutely nothing about most history and sports trivia...My smarts are usually in English and Literature....except of course if you want me to pronounce something correctly. See "blonde" moment #10).

So this being said, sometimes I get people confused with who they really are. So one day, Andrew and I are driving around and he asks me to name a player on the Lakers team. I stare at him blankly.

First of all, I'm not even sure if he's talking basketball or football. And he wants me to name a player? Ok...here it goes.

I look at him confidently and say the first name that pops into my head.

"Stonewall Jackson!"

Ha! So there! He didn't see that one coming now did he! I. Am. So. SMART!

And then I look at him and see that he is laughing. No, not laughing...more like cackling at me.

"What?" I say. "Do I have the wrong team?"

He can barely get the words out and every time he even tries to talk, he glances at me, sees the look on my face and then starts howling again.

I start to get a little annoyed.

"Well, are you going to tell me? What's so funny?"

He finally gets a hold of himself and says, "Stonewall Jackson? Really? Are you being serious?"

He looks at me again and sees that I am and therefore this throws him into another fit of laughter.

I stare ahead in front of me wanting to plummet myself out of the car into on-coming traffic.

And finally, he breaks it to me. Apparently...Stonewall Jackson was a general in some war...(who knew?). But in my defense, doesn't the name "Stonewall" sound like a basketball (or football?) player's name?....

Doesn't it?

8. I hate being wrong. (Who doesn't?) But I especially hate being wrong when I'm being so adamant that I'm right. For example, one day my family and I were sitting around talking about random things when the subject turned to Disney World. We were discussing how much we all were amazed that my old Pontiac Grand am "Betsy" made it to and from there so many times. So I made the comment "Yeah I know. She's been there and back 3 times! Crazy!"

My dad looks at me and says, "No. She's only been there and back 2 times."

I look at him knowingly. "No. remember? I drove her to Florida when I lived there. Then back again. (That's 2 times right?) Then when I went a couple of years ago. (3)

He stared at me. "But that only makes 2 times."

"No No No. It's 3."

I kept trying to explain to him the logic of how many times and I was starting to get frustrated...did this really matter anyway? I kept trying different angles to approach it and kept coming up with the same result. And he kept telling me that it was only 2 times, there and back.

So I tried the first route again. "I drove her to Florida when I lived there. Then back again. (That's 1 time) And then I drove her there and back a couple of years ago...that's 2 times and then....."

He looked at me.

Crap. I knew I was caught..."And then...."

Oops. Look at that. He was right all along...

7. Scary movies are not my forte'. (See previous blog from 3/5/09 if you don't believe me.) I am the type of person who has mapped out in my head where I would hide should someone try to come in my house and kill me. I've even tried fitting myself between the mattress and the box spring (the perfect hiding place right?). And I've timed it out exactly and done trial runs to make sure I am prepared for any possible sudden attacks.

When I was in high school, there were often times when I found myself being home alone. I did not like these times. Even in the daytime, I had a hard time occupying myself enough to not sit in quiet too long and imagine all of the non-existent noises I was hearing.

One day. These noises were not non-existent. They were real. Someone was trying to get in the house. Needless to say, I panicked.

So I thought to myself. Mary. You can do this. You have to protect yourself. I could hear whoever was trying to get in getting closer and closer to achieving their goal. So I decided then and there that I would be brave and defend myself. I grabbed the nearest thing to me to use as a weapon. Not a knife. Not a shovel. Not a piece of rope.....a hairbrush.

Yes. A hair brush.

You ask me, what was I thinking? (See title of this blog...)

So dangerous hairbrush in hand, I started creeping down the hall. Said attacker was getting closer, but I had my weapon and my plan in mind. (And yes, I was going to beat him senseless with my trusty hairbrush...and no one was going to stop me.)

I was getting closer and so was he. I heard voices. (There was more than one of them). They were coming in the door. I could hear it creaking and their footsteps were getting closer to me. I reached the end of the hall. I knew that as soon as they rounded the next corner, they would see me, "weapon" in hand and pull out their own defenses. I decided then and there to act fast. I wouldn't give them the chance to see me first. Here it goes.

I rounded the corner and charged!!!!!!!!!! Hairbrush held high and screaming like a banchie! But stopped short...

There standing in front of me was my brother and a couple of his friends. They looked at me. I looked at them. Then they saw the hairbrush. They looked at me again....

I tried to play it cool (so what if I had forgotten they were coming over that day? So what if my brother was holding his house key in his hand and I hadn't reasonably deducted the fact that his putting the key in the door was the scary noise I was hearing...)

They continued to stare at me. I had nothing.....

So I walked away.

But trespassers beware. You won't be so lucky....

6. One of my most favorite t.v shows is "Alias". Any show where the woman is always the one that kicks ass is something I am highly entertained by. But that's beside the point.

One day, not too long ago, my brother Pat and sister-in-law Jenn and I were sitting at the kitchen table. We were talking about the show and Jenn mentioned how she missed Sidney (Jennifer Garner's character) dressing up so much like she had in the first couple of seasons. Then she made the comment: "I mean the show is called "Alias", you would think they would keep that up right?"

I looked at Jenn and it clicked. "Oh!" I said. "That's why the show is called "Alias". I always wondered that."

Pat and Jenn stared at me like a cow does at an oncoming train.

I stared back innocently..."What?"

5. Growing up, Pat and I loved watching old Dr. Who episodes. It was my Dad's fault actually. He was the one who introduced us to the British show and we were hooked from the beginning. Often times, we would sneak into his room while he was sleeping and snag one of his tapes of episodes from his closet and watch it all day long. We even made up a Dr. Who game where we would build forts and go on "missions" and such. Good times. Good times.

We were talking about the show one day, many, many years later and Dad said something about the robotic dog in the show named K-9. I didn't hear all of what he was saying because when he mentioned the dogs name, I had an epiphany. Suddenly I blurted out:

"Hey! That's cool. The dog's name was K-9...you know, like canine. Like the species...!"

Yea me! I'm so. Smart.

Pat looked at me and my dad started laughing. "Really?" They said in unison.

I looked at them back. "What?"

4. Oops! I forgot to put a # 4! So me forgetting to count will serve as my #4 blonde moment!

3. The infamous chicken bone- (See blog from 4/2/09)

2. Pat and I loved to ride our bikes when we were little. It was one of our favorite things to do. (What kid doesn't like riding a bike?)

One afternoon, we were doing our normal obstacle course of riding up and down the driveway and all the way around the house. We would do this multiple times throughout the day and try to make it more interesting along the way.

So I get this brilliant idea that when Pat was going around the house one way, I would go the opposite way and we would pass each other and go from there. However, I forgot one minor detail. I somehow neglected to tell him that I was going to do this, so he was never pre-warned that I was coming.

So there we were, I was going one direction while he was going the other...both at full speed and it looked as though we were going to meet in the middle....literally.

Suddenly I realized that he wasn't slowing down and he was headed right towards me....we were going to crash.

So what did I do you ask? Well naturally...I panicked.

I swerved to my right to get out of the way, failing to remember that the only thing directly to my right was a huge hill that ended up at the bottom of our property. Not so bad, right?

Right.

So one would think I would hold onto the bike with all my might, hoping that I was still on it by the time I reached the bottom of the hill and was able to break. Right?

Wrong.

Instead, I decided to go all evil canevil and I jumped off of my bike, thinking I would land softly on the ground.

Unfortunately, this was not the case. Instead of landing on the ground, I landed right smack dab, face-first....into a tree....

Yes.

A tree.

I. Am. Brilliant.

1.So I had been at my current job for about 3 months when I had to resort to calling them one morning to let them know I was going to be a bit late. When asking me why, I reluctantly answered that I was lost....

Yes. Lost.

On the way to work.

At a job I had been working at for 3 months.

Lost.....

But let me explain. I had gotten up extra early to go by the post office and took a different route. I thought I knew where I was going and ended up in a while different county....

It was sad.

Very sad indeed.