If Satan Were Anal Retentive: My Most Embarrassing Moment

Until my mid-20s, I never had an interesting story to tell when asked to recount my most embarrassing moment. Since I had no good example, whenever my turn came to answer, I'd just make something up. "I, uh...tripped and fell on stage when I went to receive my diploma." Nope. Not true. Since experiencing my most embarrassing moment, however, I believe the universe simply wanted to give me 20+ years to develop the ego strength I'd need to cope with the horror that would eventually befall me.

Here is my story. Unfortunately, it is true.

Grover, you have NO idea.

I was living in Santa Cruz, California, and a friend from Massachusetts (which is where I grew up) had come out there to live for the summer. Soon after she arrived, her sister came for a visit and brought along her husband and their son Zachary, who was about 6 months old.

To commemorate this blending of the coasts, we decided to attend an Oakland A's/Boston Red Sox baseball game. [Cue superfluous picture of Big Papi]

He's so cute!

Our seats were located waaaaaaay up in the nosebleed section. Seated in the same section were a couple dozen drunk, fat, ornery characters who immediately didn't like our group because some of us were sporting Red Sox gear. They started spouting loud, borderline-threatening comments in our direction as soon as they saw us walking up the aisle. Ah, drunken fans - such quality examples of humanity.

However, after we took our seats and the fans saw Baby Zachary, their attitudes changed. See, Zachary was a really cute baby, and this is coming from someone who doesn't think babies are cute at all. It was his eyes that made the difference; they were huge and green, kind of like this:

...except cute, not terrifying. More like this:

When the doofus brigade saw Zachary, they started talking to him instead of to the rest of us. (It probably helped that he wasn't wearing any Red Sox gear.) "Aw, look at you! What a cutie, huh?" Zachary would smile at them and flash his snazzy eyes, and they'd all start ooh-ing and ahh-ing like a bunch of new dads seeing their babies for the first time. It was pretty nauseating, but I was glad that they weren't threatening us anymore.

Zachary continued charming the crowd for several innings. He was a very happy, smiley baby and was making all the fans giggly and joyful. At some point (I have no idea how this happened), Zachary was plunked onto my lap to be fed. I cradled him in one arm and began feeding him a bottle. He gazed up at me with those lovely, trusting eyes and began reaching his little hands up to my face. To be playful, I started "fake" biting at his fingers.

And then...

[I want to die just writing this.]

...one of Zachary's little fingers popped into my mouth just as I was play-chomping my teeth together, and CHOMP! I bit down, very hard, right onto one of his little tiny baby fingers.

Oh, Jesus Christ.

Zachary's whole body jolted, and those big, (formerly) trusting eyes bugged out in shock and horror. And then, that happy, smiley baby erupted into horrible, pain-filled cries of despair, complete with milk streaming out of his mouth and all over his clothes.

Zachary was whisked out of my grasp immediately and handed to his poor, confused mother. I explained what had happened, as quietly as possible, to my friend, who relayed the information to her sister. Things seemed pretty calm (aside from Zachary's screaming) until his father said, "What happened?" and my friend's sister stated, quite loudly: "She bit Zachary!"

That's when the crowd turned against me. If you'll recall, everyone around us had fallen in love with Zachary over the course of the game, and now an evil woman (that would be me) had caused him to go from being the bringer of hope and joy to all mankind to being a miserable, sobbing wreck of his former self. I was surrounded by glares, shaming comments, and general ostracism for the rest of the game.

Since that event, I've been told that, when play-biting babies' fingers, one is supposed to wrap one's lips around one's teeth to prevent actually biting said fingers. Yeah, that would've been helpful information to have before almost amputating Zachary's finger with my teeth. But seriously, folks, I was just trying to be playful! What the hell did I know about babies? Nothing! Who the hell put that kid in my lap? I mean really. His mom should've known I didn't know anything about babies and would most likely end up biting him. I blame her. [Not really.]

So yes, that was a really fucking horrifying event. I would've rather tripped and fallen on any stage, at any time, ten times over. In fact, I would've rather fallen down a flight of stairs, even, or perhaps off of a cliff. Any of those options would have been preferable.