Embarrassing Experiences

In my childhood and youth, I was a naughty boy who liked to try anything exciting or adventurous. During those years, either playing in the house or neighborhood, I truly had plenty of fun and got many precious memories. Nevertheless, as most of the people, several things I have done then were really embarrassing and made me blush. Sometime I still feel shamefaced while recalling those embarrassing moments, even if they have passed for a long time. And once in a while, I just can’t believe how I could have been so intoxicated with those stupid things. To me, however, some of them are definitely my unforgettable memories.

     One of my unforgettable embarrassing experiences happened in an afternoon when no adults were at home; my father work outside and my mom went to play mahjong with neighbors. I orchestrated a stupid adventure and led to some troubles in the end. To begin with, three children, I, Bruce and Sandy, my young brother and sister, stayed at home doing homework and watching TV. After finishing my homework, I gradually felt bored and restless. I set out to find something fun to play, and in a moment an exciting idea emerged in my head. I told Bruce and Sandy: “I will have an adventure, would you guys like to join me?” In fact, they always joined my silly games and enjoyed them with me. Soon afterwards, we started to rearrange and move all the furniture from the living room to every bedroom; in other words, the furniture was completely out of place. The purpose of what we did was to make every piece of furniture connected altogether or be closed to each other as much as possible. After ten minutes of effort, everything was finally ready. I said: “Now, imagine we are monkeys in a devil forest, and the only way to survive is going through the path made up by furniture without touching the floor.” Well, I know that really sounds like a stupid idea to you now, but we were really amused by this sort of activities at that time.

     We started off from the living room and went to each bedroom by jumping on chairs and tables or hanging on a wooden shelf. At the beginning everything was going well until we came to a big closet, two or three times higher than my height, in my room. We attempted to climb through the closet by grasping the ledge over it. At first I quickly and easily got through this barrier, but Bruce was a little nervous and shifted his body on the closet slowly and carefully. The closet abruptly got unstable and swayed, as soon as he passed the half of it. So Bruce hastily tried to stabilize that, but unfortunately it did not work. As a result, the closet fell down, and Bruce stuck beneath it. The accident truly astounded us, yet it was a mercy that he didn’t get hurt. After the failure of seeking to save my brother by removing the closet from his body, I worked myself up and ran out to find my mother for help. When I accessed the neighbor’s house, my mother was playing mahjong with our neighbors. She asked me what the matter was; I was a little shy to say: “We had an adventure at home, and consequently … Bruce was stuck on the closet in my room.” My mother was angry and shouted at me, “What have you done?” while other adults laughed. At that moment I felt so guilty and embarrassed; if there was a hole near me, undoubtedly I would leap and hid myself. Ten minutes afterward Bruce was saved by mom, and I was punished. But it did not stop me from planning another stupid game later.

     Another one of my unforgettable embarrassing experience is that when I and my brother attempted to steal fruits from a fruit tree in somebody’s backyard, and an accident occurred. In our community there were several small wild fruit trees. Every summer, I, Bruce and kids in our neighborhood always checked in turn whether the fruit was ripe or not. Although the various wild fruits such as guavas, mangos, lemons, papayas, and longans, even watermelons and strawberries we found occasionally, were surely delicious, we enjoyed the picking activities and hanging out together at the sunny afternoon but ate these fruits. One day we found a big guava tree in someone’s backyard outside of our community. There were two walls, about one meter between them, separately at the border of the backyard and our community. We measured that if we climbed up the wall, it is not too difficult for us to jump cross the wall and get the guava. Thus, we felt rather excited, and it really fired up the vigor of us to conquer the challenge.

     Although the wall was two or three times higher than our height, we could have climbed up readily by helping each other. After standing on the wall, we recognized that it was not truly easy to jump across the gap as we thought before. Nevertheless, we were still apt to try it. The older kids tried to leap at first and younger ones followed them. At the beginning everything was going well, we all successfully got through the barrier and staggered on the roof covered with old and fragile tiles. Unluckily, as I almost got the first guava, I mindlessly broke a tile and lost one of my shoes. The sound from the broken tile seemed to arouse the host’s attention, so we tended to jump back to our community in a hurry. At this moment, Bruce got nervous again and tried to stride on the roof for getting out of there. But the roof was far more vulnerable than we expected. Suddenly, boom, the part of the roof slumped down, Bruce plunged into the house. This time he was not as lucky before, he broke one of his arms. However, the fortune was that the host was a benevolent elder; he had mercy on us and sent Bruce to the hospital. After we came back home from the hospital with the host, my mother was mad at me and shouted: “Why couldn’t you just stop bringing about troubles?” Although the host not only didn’t request us to compensate for his house but said:”If you want to pick the guava in my backyard next time, just push the bell at the entrance and I would let you in,” I felt embarrassed and burst into tears, because I thought that it was totally my fault bringing troubles to the host, my mom and Bruce. I really regretted for what I did then.

     Afterward, however, I still did lots of stupid things during my youth; it seemed that I did not get many lessons from aforementioned embarrassing experiences. But I gradually regarded those experiences as precious memories when I grew up, because they were innocent, clear, vivid, unforgettable, and, the most important, they were the story of my own life. There is a Chinese proverb: “Footprints in the sand show where one has been,” I think it is true. Even though embarrassing experiences may still make us feel a little awkward when the flashbacks are recalled occasionally, they are the best evidences to demonstrate that we ever enjoyed our childhood or youth.