It’s that spirit shattering moment. We try to avoid it. It happens anyway.
Those defining moments in life that trigger our body to flush with embarrassment and our computer brain to erase all files but one: you are the most stupid person to ever walk the earth.
It’s in that internalized shame and blame kind of moment that our embarrassment flares so brightly, it projects a Roman rocket glow clear into the next zip-code area. Then we feel it boomerang back and do a nose dive into the pit of our gut, where it burrows deep into our cellular body, until our next “one spark away from human combustion” moment.
So, in the context of vanishing acts, here’s one of those moments that I witnessed first hand.
My husband and I were standing in the box office line at Foxwoods Casino, waiting to purchase Criss Angel tickets, when the whole thing erupted.
For ten minutes, I had watched three kids playing a weave and duck game of tag around red velvet ropes and divider poles that were as tall as they were. Two moms stood nearby, eyes glued to their cell phones, oblivious to the combustible drama about to take place.
Then, with an ear splitting metallic crash, one pole did a heavy floor bounce and roll. For just a second, the expansive lobby area went into total silence. A tiny girl stood in full view as the obvious offender.
One mom, cell phone still in hand, screeched out across the silent crowd, “REALLY? REALLY?”
A big, stern-faced security guard, with both hands in his pockets, looked straight down over the little brunette’s head, asking, “Was it you?”
And in that shame and blame, “I’m gonna wet my pants” moment, I’m pretty sure that little lady was praying for a disappearing act that would have Criss Angel himself cheering with astonishment.
In the moment of that girl’s fear, my own “I want to disappear” moment came racing back from its decades old hiding place.
That day, my mother was standing at the meat counter in Burgess Market, and behind her I was playing with a row of tiny spice boxes. The next thing I knew, the boxes were on the floor and a big tall man, with his hands on his hips and his tongue making a tsking sound, gruffly instructed me to pick them up.
Maybe he really wasn’t big or gruff, and maybe the security guard at Foxwoods really didn’t mean to scare that little girl, and maybe our mothers should have been paying better attention, but that’s another blog.
Point being, those defining moments, whether in childhood or adulthood, can hang with us forever.
What matters most is how we choose to define them, and allow them to define us.
Will we download these experiences into our cells as a searing shameful judgement, or a lighter laughable moment, the kind that make great storytelling.