When Time Hop gets ugly

There's this app called Time Hop that shows you what you were up to (your online activity) on this day a year, five years, eight years, ten years ago, etc. OF COURSE, you already know that. I'm not trying to be patronizing. The Madgespace audience covers a wide age demographic, and it's better to over-explain than leave my older constituents in the dark.

Anyway, Time Hop usually uncovers a super cute photo from back in the skinny, no-wrinkles days. It's a heartwarming walk down memory lane.

Today, however, things weren't so rosy.

Today, my sister Anna's Time Hop decided to take this unfortunate Facebook status out of mothballs:

So many questions. 

What in particular did Sara Bareilles do to move Anna in such a profound way? Was it a certain song? A music video? A TV interview?

To be fair to Anna, people used to treat their Facebook statuses a lot more like Twitter. Remember that? You could just update your status with any innane thought that popped into your head. For a while there, back in the early days, every status had to complete the sentence "I am..." It was wild. People's statuses would be like, "hating life right now because I have a test in the morning and haven't studied at all!!!!!!!111" or "pooping - lol."

Welp, that's me done blogging for the night. I promised myself I'd do a seven minute workout before bed. Bring on the wall-sits!

LYMI, 

Margaret

Re: Soccer

Image via Wikimedia Commons

"Did you ever play on a soccer team?" my brother-in-law William asks my mom.

She answers, "You know, I distinctly remember being in the car, my dad was driving, and out the window we saw them. There they all were. Spread out across the field. And we said, 'WHAT is that!?' And it was soccer. We'd never seen it before in our lives."

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In Edinburgh circa 2011, Andy asked me to play soccer (or "football" as it was called back then) with him and a group of girls he met in the park. I needed the cardio, so I agreed.

We met every Sunday for a few weeks. I was starting to feel pretty confident. I'd never played soccer before, but I could run fast and even stole the ball on a few occasions.

Then, something terrible happened. One night, after the game, Andy asked me, "So, why do you roll the ball in during your throw-ins?"

Uhhhh.

CRAP.

I'd been doing it wrong! I'd been doing it wrong all along! Instead of chucking the ball in a straight-arms, over-the-head heave, I'd been ROLLING IT UNDERHAND back onto the pitch.

How mortifying.

I never returned to Sunday soccer, and I still cringe when thinking about it.

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YouTube is awash with amazing soccer videos. But this one is the best.

So long,
Margaret

Most embarrassing moment

Ah, teenagers. Nobody knows what to do with them. Parents, teachers, the government, the teenagers themselves—everyone just smothers the situation in deodorant and hopes things work out for the best.

Looking back on my teenage years, there's so much I wish I knew then that I know now (Hmm, someone should write a song about that. I'm thinkin' Rod Stewart?).

Prime example: my most embarrassing moment. It's cringe-worthy to this day.

The year: 2000
The city: Kenmore, Washington, USA
The place: Kenmore Jr. High

The story actually starts on 62nd Ave, in the Arrowhead neighbourhood of southwest Kenmore. I was in my childhood home, in my childhood bed, with visions of Chad Michael Murray dancing in my head. Then what in my snoozing state did I hear? A Fred Meyers alarm clock blasting in my ear. 

SHIZE. Slept in. The bus would be at the corner in one minute.  No time to shower. No time to eat. It was a straightforward 'grab the backpack and run' job. 

Lucky for me, baggy grey sweatpants  + oversized navy blue hoodie + messy bun was the style at KJH those days. No need to even change out of the PJs. I could literally jump out of bed and run out the door. 

I made it to street corner just as the big yellow school bus was about to close its doors. Phew!

Catching my breath, I found a seat near the back and sank into the brown vinyl cushions, quite proud of my near miss. That had to be a record. I'd been asleep just ONE MINUTE before! Wait 'til the gang hears about this. Gosh darn it, Margaret, you've pulled off a real humdinger. 

But my relief was short lived. Something didn't feel right. I felt too free, too relaxed—too uninhibited. Suddenly, I was hyperaware of my nipples. OH CRAP. No bra. 

My room during junior high and high school. Key components:
Giant fruit painted on the wall
Star Wars Episode 1 poster
Harry Potter books stacked up near the mirror
Blue Bear (wearing a bra?) and friends on the couch
Large Ouija board 'planchette' made of wood
Cut-out drawings from the 'Grossology' book series above the closet doors 

My lack of proper boob apparel certainly took the sheen off my sleeping-in success. But as far as junior high emergencies go, it wasn't that bad. All I would have to do is walk around with my arms folded the whole day. It was only six hours. I could handle that. Little did I know, the situation was about to get much, much worse. 

It was second period—Mr. Guy's art class. I'd already made it an hour, arms folded tightly and no one the wiser. Then the vice principal's voice came over the intercom:

"This is a reminder for all 8th graders to please start heading to the gym for the scoliosis screening."

SCOLIOSIS SCREENING. SCOLIOSIS SCREENING. SCOLIOSIS SCREENING.

The words echoed in my ears. I had completely forgotten that today was the day I would be extracted from my studies and tested for a RARE SPINE DEFORMATION. I had completely forgotten that today was the day I would be required to: 1) remove my shirt, 2) stand in front of a parent volunteer and 3) bend forward slowly, creating a 90 degree angle with my body. 

We'd been reminded about it for weeks. "Girls should make sure to wear a bra or swimsuit top on the day of the screening" it said on the paper handout. At the time I thought that was hilarious. Swimsuit top? We're 14 years old! Who isn't wearing a bra by now? Hahahaha. 

Now who was laughing.

I started following my classmates toward the gym. Embarrassed. Terrified. Powerless. Not at any point did it occur to me that I could just skip the screening, go hang out in the bathroom for 20 minutes, feign illness or, better yet, JUST WALK HOME. 

Instead, I continued to shuffle slowly toward my fate. At the last-minute, I told my friend about my predicament. Maybe she'd have an idea of what I should do. 

"Oh my god, that sucks." she said. "That totally sucks."

That was it, and I was next in line. There was nothing I could do now.

So I walked behind the curtain, took my sweatshirt off and exposed my braless body without a word of explanation. The examiner was the mother of a boy in my grade. As I bent forward slowly—my spine the picture of health—I imagined her and her son at the dinner table, laughing hysterically as she told him all about my bare bosoms.

But at least I had learned a valuable lesson. 

From that day forward, until the day I graduated high school, I slept in my bra. 

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OK, I'm off to England for the weekend. I'll still write a blog each day, but expect the quality to be even worse than usual.

Have a fantastic weekend!

Love,
Margaret