Sunday, April 3, 2011

"Manners Monday" - Life's Embarrassing Moments


This week's "Manners Monday" recalls the old Saturday Night Live sketches with Gilda Radner playing the character, Roseanne Roseannadanna. Each week, while discussing a current social issue she would inevitably digress and launch into a lengthy antecdote featuring a celebrity who suffered from some really embarrassing moment. Now Jennifer Brandt and I aren't featuring celebrities, but we are taking a light-hearted look at what you can do if you witness someone at the mercy of a truly embarrassing moment or if you yourself are caught in an unfortunate incident. Here are a few helpful tips to employ in these types of situations.

1.Tell them about it. Whether it’s a piece of spinach in the teeth or a toilet seat cover hanging from their pants, people deserve to know. The last thing anyone wants is to discover a shortcoming when they thought they were being fabulous.

2. It’s all in the delivery. Expressing yourself in the right way is the key. The point is to be discreet and employ the utmost sensitivity when telling the other person about their embarrassing moment.

3. Laughter is the best medicine. If you are the one experiencing an embarrassing moment, rather than be defensive, find the humor in the situation and move on.

4. Be secure with yourself. Refrain from constantly checking in with others to receive validation. It can become bothersome to repeatedly ask if you have food in your teeth or bad breath or other similar offenses.

5. It happens to everyone. The most important thing to remember is that embarrassing moments happen to everyone so always be kind and think about what you would do if the shoe were on the other foot.

Finally, here's one of my favorite classic Roseanne Roseannadanna stories.


She was talking about eating a hamburger in a restaurant and how she felt something hard in it. And she spit it out and it was white and looked like a toenail. She said, "I thought I was gonna die. I mean, what was a toenail doing in my hamburger?" Then she went to the restroom and on the way to the restroom she saw Princess Lee Radziwill who she described as the "classy lady that no one knows where she's the princess of." But what the Princess didn't know was she had a tiny piece of toilet paper hanging off her shoe, and she was walking around and the toilet paper wouldn't fall off. "I thought I was gonna be sick. So I says to her, 'Hey Princess Lee—what are ya tryin' to do, make me sick?' " So Jane Curtin asked her what this had to do with anything. Roseanne said, "Well it just goes to show you, it's always something, you either got a toenail in your hamburger or toilet paper clinging to your shoe." 

Got any off the charts embarrassing moments to share? Let us know what happened and how you recovered. We'd love to hear from you!!

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