When I was in the sixth grade, I lost a baby tooth in a Gusher. I was sitting in Kealing Middle School’s cafeteria at “A Lunch” (10:30 am), enjoying the pack of gummies I had brought in my metal Strawberry Shortcake lunch tin, a hand-me-down from my mother’s adolescence. With one bite, my tooth was yanked from my head and fell into my lap. Out of fear of alienating myself from the group (pulling teeth at the lunch table is unsettling, no?), I quickly slipped the bicuspid into the package with the remaining Gushers. Nobody saw, and the coast was clear.
After lunch, I had 90 minutes of math, 90 minutes of physical science, and 90 minutes of gym, all concluding with a hot ass bus ride home. My finger-length shorts and I were ready to end the day. As I was sitting single rider on my bus bench, a girl behind me tapped me on the shoulder, asking if I had any snacks left over from lunch. I gladly opened my lunch box and rifled through containers until I found, could it be, a complete package of Gushers? Wow! Feeling philanthropic, I donated my precious treat to the cause.
Suddenly, I was overwhelmed by her screams. Palm to my forehead, my entire body cringed beneath me, sending a feverish sweat down my spine. The tooth! How could I have forgotten about the tooth! I sank back in my booth, my face flushed and tingling. My embarrassment consumed me the rest of the ride home.
An internet philosophy I’ve harbored some resentment toward is that doing something embarrassing only happens if you let yourself get embarrassed. In part, I think it’s an encouraging message to put into the world. It suggests we have more power over our narratives, that cringe culture is something we can opt out of through sheer force of will. But here’s what that philosophy conveniently ignores: making mistakes and having embarrassing moments still come with the physiology of it all. Our cheeks flush, our pulse quickens, and that little lizard part of our brain tells us to hide. You can’t think your way out of a stress response. Tooth-gate eventually made me laugh, but I still had a voice in my head starting to enforce social vigilance, cataloging missteps for future rumination. My incident with the Gushers is a tame example of how I’ve let my memories haunt me, and at eleven years old, I didn’t have enough room in my consciousness to give myself any true perspective.
What amazes me now is how much I’ve let memories like this haunt me. My embarrassment eventually morphs to a debilitating haze, a thick cloud taking covenant over the corner of my brain whose job it is to make sure I’m still me. Instead, the fog pushes an overwhelming desire to meet impossible standards—perfection, demureness, palatability—to sedate me while co-piloting my outward expression. I think I’ve struggled a little so far in New York, letting my perpetual embarrassment dictate where I can and cannot go, only allowing glimmers of myself to reach the surface. So, to “yes and” the whole idea of conquering embarrassment…shit still feels embarrassing even when you’re secure and confident! The idea that we can decide not to be embarrassed has been a fantasy sold to me by people who want everything to feel empowering and within our control (that and people who have genuinely tested the limits of extroversion). But it’s not fair to then judge myself based on moments that make me cringe, all because I wasn’t supposed to be cringing at myself in the first place. Doing this robs my actual personality of opportunity for vulnerability and growth, muffling my sense of self.
Moment of honesty: the story offered up here isn’t truly a memory that keeps me awake at night (at least not anymore). What haunts me most these days is when I joined a friend for yoga at Equinox on Orchard, and there was a bit of a mix-up. As context, I had spent 10 days as a Front Desk Associate at the Austin location a while back, so my name was mistakenly linked to my now-defunct employee email. You get the picture. So when I was explaining myself at the desk in New York, I complained, in jest, to the friendly female associates about the excessive air conditioning and the fact that we weren’t allowed to sit down… as they stood there, listening to me, in an obviously airish lobby. I could see the exact moment where their smiles faltered. As someone who leans toward social reservation more often than not, I sure as hell don’t know what compelled me to say that nonsense. What is wrong with me!
Here’s the thing: what I said was ignorant and inappropriate. But when I walked away from that desk, I guarantee I wasn’t 20 feet away before they probably bonded over my moronic comment. Which, thank god! Because now they’re connecting and commiserating over my idiocy. Letting our embarrassing moments haunt us and turn us mute is counter-productive—we’re never going to stop embarrassing ourselves. And those moments never cease to impact someone else’s story. We’re all molding and shaping each other in ways that feel insignificant but have an actual impact on our day-to-day. We’re never going to stop saying the wrong thing or putting our baby teeth back in the packet of Gushers, so there’s no use in letting it drag us down. Let yourself be embarrassed and uncomfortable. Let yourself learn from your mistakes rather than punish yourself for them. If we convince ourselves that nothing is embarrassing, we’re implying ourselves as our sole audience, and that’s quite an assumption of arrogance.
I refuse to let my memories haunt me any further. Whenever I’ve personalized an experience—let something form an identity for me—I lose control, my sense of self slipping away unnoticed like that damn tooth in the Gusher pack. We’re each living on the inside of a curtain with chronic desperation for external validation, constantly filtering our performances to appease our absolute worst critic: ourselves. We’re in charge of our thoughts and how far we let them take us, a fact I’m still forging familiarity with as we speak. Feelings are not facts, and learning to exercise proper discernment over my thoughts is challenging and rewarding in its own right. I know because I can feel the proof in my lack of muscle tension. It’s the first time I’ve seen myself as something other than completely perfect or nothing at all, feeling human in a way that’s actually endearing rather than icky.
The embarrassing moments don’t define me, but they are me. They’re proof I’m trying, that I’m generous enough to share my snacks even when there’s a bicuspid hiding in the snack pack; I’m excited enough to be a voice in the conversation that sometimes my words precede me. The alternative is staying so carefully curated that nothing surprising ever slips out. And what kind of life is that? For so long, I’ve felt as if I could just become a little smoother or socially enhanced, all those nerves and anxieties will go away—I’ll stop tripping over my words, speaking without filter, leaving my loose teeth for strangers to find. We have to have confidence that the world will keep spinning through our embarrassment, not that we’ll reach frictionless perfection one day. Waiting for the day when effortless charisma invites itself to my party has made me restless, angry at the world for not letting me in on the secret to everyone’s social success. It’s really a choice we make every day as to whether or not we get over ourselves. We can’t let embarrassment or fear paralyze us into monotonous beings with smooth brains, operating on autopilot to avoid ever being seen.
Coming to terms with the fact that we’re still going to feel the icky feelings regardless of the mental gymnastics and preparation we put ourselves through—that’s what it takes to beat embarrassment—not convincing ourselves that the feeling doesn’t exist or doesn’t matter, but accepting that it does and still choosing to show up as ourselves anyway. The discomfort is part of being alive, and the cringe is proof we’re participating.
Here’s to my baby tooth that scared the Austin youth. Here’s to my hungover rambling at the Equinox desk. Here’s to every moment we make ourselves cringe, and to every person who witnessed it. We’re all just trying to make it through the day without our weird shit falling out at the wrong time. Sometimes we succeed, often we don’t. And thank god for that.
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