The Sliding Scale Of Shame

Life is full of embarrassing moments; in fact if you’re me, it could be suggested that life is simply a series of converging, embarrassing moments. However, not all of these moments are created equal, there is a sliding scale of embarrassment, a hierarchy if you will.

Last week, whilst devouring my daily intake of Crime TV, I came across a story about the science behind determining whether someone has the characteristics of a psychopath. One of the methods used by experts, is the Hare Scale. Developed by a Canadian psychologist in the ‘70s, the test subject’s behaviours and personality traits are set against a checklist and “marked” out of 40 (an addiction to true crime does not feature in the testing process, it’s OK I checked – husband breathes sigh of relief and returns knives to kitchen). The higher the score, the greater the potential for psychopathy. “What has all this got to do with embarrassing moments?” I hear you ask; well bear with me, I have decided to create my own contribution to the world of social science… a benchmark test for ranking “making a dick of oneself.” Perhaps more hairbrained than Hare Scale, nonetheless it will form a litmus test to assist me in ascertaining just how mortified I should be at my own behaviour.

Keeping things simple, I shall use a straightforward 1-10 classification. We will start out at the low end of the band, this would be something pretty harmless. Something such as, I don’t know, trying out a new, non-waterproof mascara on a day where the humidity was around 98% and you had a pre-menstrually greasy face and a bit of hay-fever, enough to give you itchy eyes that you simply would not leave alone. The outcome of this series of unfortunate events was that by 10.30am, I had so much black goop around my eyes, I looked like I should be named Bao Bao and munching my way through 20kgs of bamboo shoots in a mountainous region of central China. Because I was in public, at work and because I mooched along for half a day in panda-ous splendour, this will be registered on the scale but in the scheme of things, it really only qualifies as about a 1-2.

Moving up the humiliation progression, let’s cast our eyes on what I consider to be around a 6. I was having dinner at a restaurant with a partner and another couple. I was wearing a dress with a pair of tights underneath, you may already be starting to see where this is headed; if so, I’m guessing it has also happened to you, long live the sisterhood! Anyhooo, I went to the bathroom, as I recall it was after the bread sticks and before the main course (I would never leave a table if there were breadsticks still available – they are cardboardy and tasteless yet simultaneously crunchy and moreish, like a treat for a teething adult). I went to the loo, adjusted my makeup and continued back to the table. Ironically, it was my tights that were both the saviour and the creator of my shame. Had I not been wearing them I would probably have noticed the cool, airy feeling around my nether regions a lot earlier. I would also have had much less elastic to tuck the entire back of my frock into. However, without them, the whole population of downtown Auckland would have seen all of my naked bum, not just the nylon-coated version – so swings and roundabouts.

Ramping it up a notch. I had had too much to drink, I’m not going to lie. I was leaving an upmarket hotel after a function, standing in a pair of very high heels at the top of a flight of stairs. I was frantically trying to maintain both my vertical position and my dignity when I lost my footing. To say I fell would be grossly understated; I plummeted down those stairs with all the grace and aplomb of an industrial-sized sack of wet cement and landed in a heap at the bottom. This would have been bad enough, but no, like an ad for Natural Glow, wait there’s more. Just as I was trying to regain my composure and make myself less like a broken marionette, the other shoe dropped. I don’t mean that in its idiomatic sense of waiting for the next, seemingly unavoidable thing to happen (although it is very apropos), I mean literally. I had lost a shoe on my descent and it was now making its way at speed toward my head. It hit its target and I was briefly rendered unconscious. Now that my friends, is what we call on the “making a dick of oneself scale”, an 8.5.

I have saved the best/worst for last. Years ago when my daughter first started high school, we got her a tablet. It was our first foray into teenagers and technology, so initially, in the interest of keeping her safe and responsible, we linked her account to mine. This meant that I controlled what apps were downloaded and what purchases were made, it also meant we shared a photo stream. My husband tours away from home fairly regularly, and at this time he was overseas and had been for a few weeks. So being creative types, my friend and I decided that I should send him some racy pics. It all started out as good, clean semi-wholesome fun. Until I remembered that my teenage daughter had access to my photos. These pictures were not Red-Light District of Amsterdam level, there was nary a donkey in sight, however the thought that I had just sent a smutty selfie to my own child was almost as mortifying as realising that Donald Trump is in charge of, well, anything. I have never been as adroit technologically as I was in the seconds it took me to delete those pictures; I was like a saucy obliteration ninja. Then the horror of the situation sunk in. Had she seen the photos? I had to wait a whole school day to find out. In the interim, my friend had come up with the dreadfully implausible lie for me to use, that I had taken the pictures for my doctor for medical reasons (I know, we were desperate and clearly not as creative as we had initially thought). Anyway, it turned out that I had been quick enough and the whole year nine class had not just been subjected to years of counselling at my hand. It all comes back to the age-old question, if you send slightly indecent photos through the internet-forest and no one is there to see them before you delete them, do they still make a sound? Irrespective as to whether my shame was made public or not, the six hours of Hell and degradation of not knowing if I had been caught, made this situation as close to as a 10 as I want to experience.

I still have a few wrinkles to iron out in my shame schema, but I think it has real applicable potential. With this as a guide, I can work out how many days I need to hide under the covers before resuming normal life or whether I simply need to change my name by deed poll and move to the Caymans. Whatever the outcome, I can assure you, I will be wearing tights…. in every photo.