Why I'm No Longer Embarrassed

The beauty of getting older is that you don’t have to suffer through embarrassment anymore. I remember being in my teens and EVERYTHING embarrassed me. If I walked out of a bathroom with toilet paper clinging to my shoe, it was enough to make me want to commit suicide.
All I ever wanted to do back then was blend in and not make a spectacle of myself. I’d rather skip a class than walk in late. Embarrassment kept me from doing many things I wanted to do.
Now it doesn’t bother me a bit to straggle in late to something. I have been late to golf tournaments and either (1) begged a golf pro to give me a ride out to the hole or (2) run across several fairways trying to catch up with my team. I wave at everyone I pass and don’t think a thing about it except to muse about what they must be thinking.
Certainly it’s better not to get into situations where I’d be late, but now I see that it’s more important to play the game than it is to worry about what people are going to think of me. I know my team would rather have me there – I get lucky and hit a decent shot every now and then. I also know that just about anything can be forgiven if you are very kind to people.
I’m not embarrassed about what I say anymore either. One time I was in a parking lot around Christmas and I was waiting for someone to back up so I could get their space. It was someone really slow, and they eased out, taking an eternity. When they finally got out of the way and I was easing in, a car came out of nowhere and whipped into the space. A trashy woman and her tattooed boyfriend got out – she was driving. I yelled, “Hey, you took my space.” She yelled back, “I got there first.” I yelled, “But I was waiting for it.” And she yelled, “So?” And I yelled back, “You’re nothing but white trash.”
My daughter literally dived into the floorboard of my car. “Oh my gosh, Mom, please tell me you didn’t just yell across the parking lot and call someone white trash in front of all these people.”
“Well, she is,” I said.
My daughter is embarrassed about everything, and she was shocked at this. We had just been to church. “What if someone from church heard you?” she asked. She was stalling for time and didn’t want to get up, even though the white trashy woman had already waddled into the store. Her boyfriend at least had the decency to look sheepish and shrug his shoulders as if he agreed with me but what could he do?
Years ago I would never have confronted that woman, and maybe I’m white trash myself for doing it now, but I just don’t care. If someone I knew had heard me, I would have been mortified, I guess, but I would have made the best of it.
Maybe that’s the difference. Maybe it’s not so much the fear of embarrassment anymore, it’s knowing that, whatever happens, I’ll manage to get through either by being witty or silly or apologetic or whatever the circumstance calls for. Plus I’ve discovered as I’ve gotten older that people don’t pay that much attention to my goings-on. Nobody’s waiting around to see what I might do and pass judgment on it.
If I could give advice to teenagers, I’d say, “Don’t let fear of embarrassment hold you back from anything you want to do.” I’d have a whole ton of other advice, too, if any of them would ever listen, which they won’t. Especially if they’re related to me.