The event itself is admittedly not as embarassing as most of the stories here. It was my age at the time it happened, coupled with the circumstances and the people who witnessed it, that made it the most cringeworthy event of my teenage years. None the less, I'd like to try to show you all how this played out, through the eyes of desperately insecure teenage girl.
I was 14 years old when I was invited to a classmate's birthday party. I was really nervous about going because the birthday girl was one of the popular rich girls, and I was so unpopular I might as well have been invisible.
Anyways, the party was huge, so huge in fact that what they did was take 3 rooms that would have normally been used for three separate parties and connect them to create one big party. One room had the cake and tables, another had been turned entirely into a dancefloor, and the third had a bunch of arcade type games.
It was a couple of hours into the party, and I'm sitting alone at one of the tables, when BG's mom suddenly starts hounding me to go "join everybody on the dancefloor". I tried really hard to get out of it, I couldn't dance to save my life, but BG's mom wasn't having it. Before I knew it, I was being ushered into a room full of flashing lights and awkward teenage dancing (you know the kind where they try to emulate what they've seen on tv but it comes out looking more like an epileptic having a seizure while silmutaneosly trying to relieve some mysterious itch on their genitals by rubbing it against the nearest person of the opposite sex?). BG's mom dumps me at the entrance of this den of misery and repressed sexual tension, tells me to have fun, and then leaves.
Still unsure whether to fully walk in or run away and face embarassment, what I did instead was simply take 3 steps to the side until I was no longer standing in front of the doorway, but rather in front of the opened door itself. I found my little spot was optimal for observing the room, so that's what I did for the next half hour or so. The thing was, I was too shy to look at any of the kids my age for too long (afraid someone would catch me looking at one of the boys and accuse me of liking him, or find me looking at one of the girls and start lesbian rumours - kids were mean), so instead I spent my time watching the employees, who dressed in all black and sneaking around in the sidelines. I noticed alot of them actually didn't look to be much older than their late teens. Probably highschool kids doing part-time work.
That was when I noticed him. He was off in a corner a couple of feet away from me, doing something or other with some lights, but I could see was he has was hot. I'm talking H-O-T. He looked to be about 17, and he was all dirty blonde hair, muscles the size of my head and what looked to be some gorgeous green eyes. For a nerdy, unpopular girl who didn't find themselves even remotely attractive, I admit I had a pretty unrealistic taste in boys. The ones I found myself attracted to were the ones who looked like they could be in an Abercrombie and Fitch catalogue (in retrospect I think it was because those types of guys were so out of my league they were "safe" to have a crush on. I never had to worry about acting on my feelings because I was very aware that nothing would come out of it). Anyways, this guy certainly fit the bill, and as far as eye candy goes, I was on a sugar high for those glorious thirty-something minutes I spent visually stalking him. I mean, at the time I thought I was being all surreptitious with my staring, but no, I'm pretty sure I was looking at him like I was Hannibal Lecter and he was holding a nice bottle of Chianti.
So you can imagine how pissed I was to be interrupted when birthday girl and a group of her popular friends pop up out of nowhere and start insisting that I dance with them. Now, don't get me wrong, I appreciated their efforts to include me when they had no real reason to. I was happy they seemed to care, but I would not, could not dance. I was terrified at the mere idea of it. So I started freaking out inside, split between politely declining over and over in hopes that they would eventually listen, and screaming at them to back off. It was during this moment of internal debate that something at the corner of my eye caught my attention. Mr. Abercrombie was looking straight at us. Then, two seemingly absurd things happened at the same time: one of the popular girls starts giggling and gets down on her knees like she's going to beg me to join them, and Mr. Abercrombie actually starts walking towards me. I mean, he was actually making eye-contact with me while taking steps in my actual direction!
So, popular girl is on her knees giggling/begging me to dance, while Mr. Abercrombie is walking in my direction, and other than freaking out what am I doing? Well, picturing our future babies for one. You see, in the 2.5 seconds it took for Mr. Abercrombie to make his way towards me, I had it all figured out. He was going to start up a conversation with me, we were going to talk all night, I was going to for once be interesting and original and not a spaz, and then we would exchange phone numbers and I would go home knowing that my life was not a complete failure. And it was with those last innocent thoughts that I looked up into Mr. Abercrombie's eyes as he stood before me and uttered these words with all the breathy sexiness of a young Leonardo DiCaprio: "Hi. Can I ask you something?" My hands were shaking. All the popular girls had frozen in place and were staring between us as if they were witnessing the big bang itself. So, of course, I did the only thing my 14 year old self was prepared to do in such a life-altering situation...I fucked it all up.
This is about how it went: "Hi. I don't know how to dance but yeah I'll dance with you, sure, or we could just talk if you want and then I'll give you my number." (You know when you have word vomit, and the words come out so fast they sort of stumble onto each other until it's almost a kind of gibberish? Yeah, it was kind of like that only instead of gibberish it was more like a trainwreck of pretty discernable verbal crap). There was a moment of awkward silence, not a peep was heard from our little group huddled next to the entrance, no sound but the seemingly distant beat of some pop song, and then Mr. Abercrombie spoke up again. "Uh...Okay...but I just wanted to ask you if you'd mind stepping away from the door so I can close it. The light coming in from the other room is kind of ruining the lighting effect in here..." I freeze. I briefly contemplate the quickest ways to end my existence. I mutter "Okay" and walk out of the room by myself.
What happened then was pretty much as pathetic as you can imagine. I hid in the bathroom for the next couple of hours. I heard girls coming in giggling and telling each other the story of how that weird girl thought a hot guy was hitting on her (it spread fast). I ended up leaving the bathroom 30 minutes before my mom was set to arrive, only because by then BG's mom heard about the story and started looking for me, and I was afraid she would call the cops if she thought I'd left on my own. I made my presence known from far away and walked out of the party before she could try to talk to me.
I spent the rest of party outside, waiting for my mom on the sidewalk in the hopes of saving myself from further embarassment, but she ended up being so late I had to watch most of the other kids pass me by on their way out, either trying not to look at me or laughing and whispering while looking straight at me. The cherry on top of the cake? Towards the very end of the evening, probably no more than 2 minutes before my unforgivably late mother finally arrived, Mr. Abercrombie walks out, holding hands with a girl who was still dressed in her full black work uniform. Mrs. Abercrombie had been there. He never once looked in my direction, but Mrs. Abercrombie did notice me, and though our eyes met for only a brief moment as they passed me by, in that brief moment I could swear I saw pity.