There’s a cruel and inescapable phenomenon in which the universe heaps embarrassment on people who are not safely surrounded by the friends who know them well enough to laugh together about it. This is very uncool, Universe, and for the record, we don't love it. NO WE DO NOT.

How many of us have fallen on our faces when we are surrounded by people but NOT ANY PEOPLE WE KNOW? Have mercy, this is a cruel world.

See, Adelaide has a bath toy that's a frog who is wearing a crown. A frog king, one might say. And it's innocent enough, to call a frog with a crown a "frog king," except when that person is three and drops her Rs. Just pause for a moment and run that one through the ol’ noggin again. 

Anyway, a few months ago, due to her sudden new obsession with Frog King, I spent an entire Saturday hearing her spew accidental obscenities, particularly when I attempted to subtly leave Mr. King in the car when we were running an errand, and she noticed, flailing and yelling "FROG KING FROG KING FROG KING!” in a parking lot, completely ignoring my loud whisper hiss: ”IT'S A FROG PRINCE FROG PRINCE FROG PRINCE.” Every time the words left her adorable little mouth, my soul was in literal pain, and I was 99 percent sure she’d be dropping F-bombs at church the next day, our new church, where no one really knew us yet. You could say my nerves were Frog King shot. Good news: I crammed that baby’s mouth with donuts at church that morning, so she didn’t talk much, but there’s also a strong possibility that she sailor-cussed her teachers, and they were too kind or shocked to tell me. Pastors’ kids, they do this kind of thing.

But isn’t it strange how things like that tend to happen around people that don’t yet know us well? People with whom we’ve yet to establish that crucial foundation of “I’m not crazy, promise.” Because the first time I had a our former small group girls over to my house, my heel got stuck under me as I elegantly descended the stairs, and I knee-boarded down half of the flight, with a series of slow and resounding BOOM BOOM BOOMs, landing on my knees with my hands in the air like I’m Gene Kelley at the end of a long tap dance. NO ONE TALKED for thirty seconds, and I stayed there, frozen, with my hands in the air, all “TA DAAAA,” like I should be wearing sequins and holding a top hat. It was insane because, hello, our friendships were too new, and no one yet knew how to make fun of me. They were like, “Oh no, are you okay?” and I was like “YEAH HA HA NO BIG DEAL” as I hobbled to the dining room to grab a piece of cake and lamented my inability to use my right knee. WHO NEEDS A RIGHT KNEE? Now those girls are good friends and would roast me, and I would be so relieved. The lesson here, I guess, is to just make fun of strangers when they fall down.

Unfortunately this kind of thing happens every time I'm trying to make new friends. In college, I had two weird things happen back to back the day I pledged my sorority and was meeting all my newly purchased besties. We had to wear white, and someone brought me a dress to borrow, but the dress didn’t fit and would only zip half way up. Then, as I’m trying to be funny about the dress (JOKES, YOU KNOW, THIS IS HOW I COPE), I was bitten by a strange bug and my entire arm swelled up and I had to leave and go to the student health center. LIFE! What are you doing?! I AM TRYING TO BE COOL HERE, AND YOU ARE RUINING IT! Pretty soon I could tell that I had been categorized as the girl in the half-zipped dress and the swollen bug arm, and that’s a strange place to find yourself. My pledge class voted me “Most Unique,” which is a compliment when it’s from people that know you, and a “we aren’t sure what to think of you yet” non-compliment from people who don’t. I had somehow just been voted Classiest of my senior class in high school (unexplained miracle), and all I could think was, “Oh my, that was quite the plummet.” Of course I never redeemed myself, just got weirder and weirder, and my purchased besties turned out to be fantastically accepting of the weirdness and truthfully, an awesome investment. The lesson here is that Life will betray you and then inexplicably act nice again. Life is just like a Sour Patch Kid or a seventh grade girl.

So what’s the big takeaway from a person whose toddler may or may not curse like a sailor, who has been known to fall down jazzily in front of brand new friends and wield one Popeye-sized forearm? The only real lesson I can scrounge from this little collection of stories is to keep showing up, and eventually people will know you're not crazy, or at least they will accept your crazy. A secondary lesson is that embarrassment cannot kill you, and may even provide fodder for blog posts, hence, you know, this. Bye.