I was fourteen years old and babysitting a toddler for a couple hours at his parents’ cabin. We had a wonderful time playing games and eating animal crackers. Right before his parents were due to return, he filled up his cloth diaper. I started to change him when I ran into a little problem: what to do with all the poop? You see, all the babies I’d previously sat for had disposable diapers. All I’d had to do was wad up the dirty diapers and toss them in the trash. I knew I couldn’t toss the cloth diaper, but I didn’t think I should put all that poop in the clothes hamper, either.

I knew the answer was right in front of me, but I had a major brain cramp. Where…did…the…poop…go? My mind froze and I panicked. The child’s parents would be arriving home any second. They must never, never know I didn’t understand this basic thing about child care, or they would laugh at me and never hire me again. After a few minutes of frantically racking my brain while the toddler ran around the kitchen, sans pants, I decided to try to think it through from another angle. “Where do we put food that we don’t want anymore?” I asked myself. “Aha! The garbage disposal!”

Feeling vaguely that it was wrong, but not knowing any other options, I emptied the diaper’s contents into the sink and, with a spoon, scooted the poop toward the drain. Feeling relieved that my ordeal was almost over, I hunted around for the garbage disposal switch. There wasn’t one; I had just clogged the drainpipe. At that instant, I had an epiphany: “The toddler’s poop goes in the toilet, you IDIOT! The same place YOUR poop goes!”

Crimson with shame at the extent of my spaciness, and mortified at what I had done, I hastily poured half a can of AJAX down the drain, and ran the water. I kept one eye on the clock, and one eye on the child as I frantically mashed down the remnants of poop that kept bobbing back up. I had just washed the spoon and scrubbed the sink for the hundredth time when the parents came home. I guiltily accepted their money and told them about our afternoon, omitting, of course, the diaper drama.

Apparently they never had any problems with their sink, because they asked me to babysit many times after that. I gladly did, being very careful from that point on to put human excrement in it’s proper receptacle.

The End.

Rachel – NH

Several years ago my family and I had the most awkward Christmas dinner. It was the year that my grandparents decided they would treat us all to a special dinner at one of their favorite restaurants.
When we arrived at the restaurant, it was packed. Completely busy, but we weren’t worried. My grandpa had made a very special reservation several days prior to have a private room for the whole family to dine in. Our confidence in the reservation was short lived as we found out the staff had made a mistake and had already given the room to another party. So instead of our nice private room, they put a bunch of tables together and stuck us in the bar. Fabulous.
So after an hour or so passes, we get our meals and we’re eating and enjoying our time. Suddenly, an old man, who was sitting in the booth behind us, falls out of his seat onto my brother, passed out. Now, the old man is on the ground, not breathing and his wife is hysterically crying (which also made my cousin cry). My aunt decides this guy needs some sort of help (he was choking) and so she socks him in the stomach! A nurse, who was sitting at the bar, yells at my aunt, runs over, pushes her out of the way and starts doing CPR and the Heilmlich maneuver. Next thing I know, paramedics rush past me, revive the old man, and roll him out on a gurney…all while we’re eating dinner.
That was enough drama for Christmas dinner, right? Probably not.  As we’re all trying to calm each other down and get back to enjoying dinner, the restaurant keeps getting more and more crowded by the minute. Apparently there was no more room to sit in the waiting area, so this strange old man decides to sit down right next to me on the booth/bench thing I was on. I was totally creeped out..and for a long time none of my family even noticed this old man sitting right next to me at our table. Finally, my grandpa saw the guy and says to him, ” I don’t think you’ve met my granddaughter, her name is Emily.” It was totally awkward. After awhile, the man left and I thought that had to be the end of our crazy night. Nope.
There were crowds and crowds of people waiting to eat. What made it worse was that the service was completely slow. My cousin didn’t even get her meal until everyone else was eating dessert. Anywho, as my family was trying to finish up dinner and dessert, an angry old man starts pacing throughout the restaurant, yelling at each table, “YOU EAT AND YOU LEAVE!” We loved that. What a merry Christmas!

Emily – CA

Aargh :O …this was one of the long term awkward memories that really affected my life when I was a kid, when I was in first form(12) we had made one day in Home Economics Chili Con Carne…I’d never made it before so I was really excited and it all went great and my chili looked spectacular and we let it cool and I packed it up in a tupperware and headed for the bus home. So there was no room in my bag for the tupperware, it was like a litre sized tub full of chili and I had to bring home my lever arch folder as well which was also really heavy AND I had to get all the way home on the bus, so I survived the shove of everyone getting on the bus(no-one queued they just sardined in through the door, it was scary!)and the bus journey back home(our buses drop us in the middle of our town and then you walk home) so my town is quite small, like everyone in it knows what you’ve done five mins after you do it and on the way home is a big stationery/bookshop that I would always go into after school and read books in, instead of just trying to get home with this giant tub of chili I go into the bookshop and start reading the books, I settle for holding my folder flat against my hip like a tray and putting the tub of chili on top while I used my other hand to flick through the books…oh I know this is so predictable right!? So of course, in a split second I go to put back a book, the polyester of my jumper against the plastic of my folder makes the folder slide up against my body so the tub flips over spins once in the air, hits the GREY CARPET, the lid flies off and my chili splatters all over the floor. I was actually fully freaking out, like no no NO! The shop is full(4.30 in the afternoon) there are some girls from another school laughing their heads off(not literally ) and then I see the manager coming storming toward me with a look of thunder, I’m like ok it’s no big deal I’ll apologise, help clean it up…LOL!! My flight from flight or fight took over and in about five seconds I decide to just bolt out the door BUT instead of just running out and leaving the giant pile of chili(I am nearly crying laughing remembering this) I THROW my folder on the floor use my ARM to scrape the majority of the chili into the tupperware and then run past the hysterical girls as fast as I physically can, out the door and straight down the street with a giant lidless tub of chili until I get home and spend the next hour trying to scrub con carne off my blazer while gasping for breath, ok, then when I actually calm down and stop freaking I realise I’m going to have to go back for my folder with my name inside and the next day have to walk past the ruined grey carpet with a GIANT damp patch, some poor person had the scrub of their life on and apologise for dropping my chili and doing a bunk to a *really* hacked off manager and then spent the next year, possibly two avoiding the place. Huuuuuahmph. O_O

Tanya – Belfast

The first holiday I went on with my boyfriend we stayed in quite a rural hotel the first night we arrived we were really tired so we watched the eurovision song contest(!?) in bed and then fell asleep……whatever was going on I had a really fitful delirious sleep and woke up a few hours later with(omg at the time this was the most embarassing thing ever)…I woke up halfway through the night blowing my nose on the bed sheet!!! I have no idea why or what I was doing, all I know is that I sat up in my sleep lifted the sheet that was over me and him and started REALLY LOUDLY, like I mean really loudly, blowing my nose on it, it woke him up and I woke up kind of halfway through doing it but because I was so sleepy I just sort of sat there in this dumb stupor with the sheet in my hands until he sat up and said..’Eh, hellooo…are you ok there??’ …….

Tanya – Belfast

Hahaha….oh dear I can nearly not write this I’m laughing so hard. When I very first started dating my boyfriend, in the first month he came to visit my house. I worked really long hours so I don’t mean to make excuses, but housekeeping was not my forte. I knew he was coming back that night, and I had a massive pile of dirty dishes in the sink. Desperate, I lifted them all and put them into a plastic laundry box and covered them with a bath towel and ran out to work. Later that night we came back home and were sitting in the living room. I had a miniature rabbit and would let it run about in the house sometimes. Somehow the rabbit had deposited a pile of little pellets(as they do) on the table beside him(it was level with the sofa and it would jump about on the chair when I was sitting there. It must have happened earlier that day when I was drying my hair, and I hadn’t noticed) So we’re sitting there with glasses of wine and he’s in the middle of talking when he suddenly stops and says, “Is that rabbit poop on your table?”
I didn’t know what to say. I wanted to literally spontaneously combust. He’s like “Oh my God” in this incredulous tone and gets up to go wash his hands in the kitchen. Now this would have been cool if I had just let him wash his hands, but in a panic about the hidden dishes I jump up and shout “Please don’t go in the kitchen!” He stops dead and looks puzzled/amused so I jump in front of him (he can’t see rabbit poop and hidden dirty dishes in the same night) But me being about eight stone and him being about 18 stone he marches on into the kitchen. I’m fully freaking out at this point. He’s finding it quite amusing trying to figure out what I’m hiding, and he spots the plastic box. I watch in horror as he lifts the towel with a thumb and forefinger to reveal the mountain of dirty pots, pans and plates…..I almost cry with embarrassment, and he starts laughing and gives me a hug. We’ve been togther for seven years now and I am just as messy, he says that’s ok because I’m so good inside!! LoL

Tanya – Belfast

Oh my goodness , this is awful I feel so bad remembering this but here goes…..years ago we all went on a family holiday to Florida and the daily routine was to get up and go to one of the massive waterparks dotted around the place, you know the ones with the really long lazy river that you float round in rubber rings. One of the days that we went my mum was really grumpy and kept taking it out on us so my brother and I hatched a plan, there were two types of rubber ring, a black one for the lazy river and a red one for waterslides, the red one wasn’t allowed in the lazy river because it was too big and there were signs up everywhere saying so….so we got a red rubber ring and went to my mum on her sunlounger and gave it to her, we’re all ‘Here we got you the rubber ring, you have to go in it’s so much fun’ she was quite chunky at the time and she wasn’t sure, she kept asking why everyone else had a black ring but we convinced her it was fine and she got into the red ring(oh my God I’m laughing so hard writing this! :O) because the ring wasn’t for lazy river-ing when she sank her butt down into it she got stuck, we were chuckling by the side of the river, thinking she’d see the sign and realise and get out but she couldn’t remove herself from the ring, next thing she passes a lookout post, seeing the red ring the lifeguard picks up a massive megaphone and starts shouting into it ‘Maam can you please remove yourself from the inappropriate ring and exit the river!!’ ‘MA’AM PLEASE, RED RINGS ARE NOT DESIGNATED FOR THE LAZY RIVER!!’ over and over, we were getting more and more hysterical, the next thing she starts freaking out and kind of wriggling from side to side to try and get out but flips over with a big splash into the river with the ring on top of her, the lifeguard starts trying to tug her to the side of the river, everyone in the river is staring and then she emerges from under the ring and comes storming out like a fury…..we were so scared we ran away and hid for the rest of the day and got really bad sunburn. Probably serves us right!

Tanya – Belfast

So yesterday I went to get something out of my car. The window was down but the door was locked. (dumb move #1) So I reached into unlock the door. As soon as I did, the car alarm started to go off. It was then I noticed the 20 people across the street having a BBQ. To my horror they all watched on as I ran in and out of the house no less than 5 times. I couldn’t find my keys and I had no idea how to shut the alarm off. I looked every where in my car and in my purse – the alarm going off the whole time for about 5 minutes. And where did I find the keys to end my humiliation? In the front door, right where I had left them after coming home from church with an arm full of grocery bags! (dumb move #2)

Missie – WI

Walking into a executive building at 17 years old, only for the purpose of wandering the halls to look for the office that does the free pregnancy tests is awkward enough in itself. After finding the office and meeting with the nice counselor, I was sent to the ladies room to get a “sample.” Since the ladies room was downstairs I had to go back out of the office, into the hallway and then down the large spiral staircase which was located in the center of the building, the one that everyone used. Carrying my clear plastic cup was easier to conceal than it would be coming back up. Exiting the restroom, starting back up the stairs, there was no hiding the see-through 6 oz. cup of liquid which loudly indicated dehydration. It was at least 3/4 full. The worst part came about 15 seconds later and I am pretty sure it happened in slow motion. That’s how I remember it anyway. As I began to lose balance, I panicked at the thought of spilling some of the contents. In trying to balance the cup, I lost further control of not only myself but also the cup which flew into the air and eventually landed.  I am sure the counselor thought that I must have left since it took me several trips to the bathroom, realizing that I still needed more brown paper towels. Avoiding eye contact with anyone, I finished cleaning and carried my empty cup back into the office. After explaining to her what happened, she took the empty cup from me, looked inside it and responded cheerfully, “Oh this will be enough. We only need a drop.”

Cally – Texas