One of my childhood friends confesses to me that his otherwise peaceful early years were marred by a perfectly unnecessary bit of fighting -- which he himself initiated. "We were in the middle of a softball game in the P. S. 217 schoolyard and I struck out with two or three men on base. One of my teammates said something uncomplimentary to me and started to walk away. Humiliated and frustrated, I charged after him and jumped on his back. I'm not sure what I intended to do (my fighting skills were even worse than my softball skills)."
This less-than-earthshaking softballmachia occurred somewhere between fifty-five and sixty years ago. It is impossible that anyone in the known universe remembers either the score, the sides, the game, the strikeout, or one boy's vault onto the back of another -- no one, that is, except the perpetrator himself, who goes on to confess that he is "embarrassed and ashamed even now." I do not doubt for an instant that he's telling the exact truth, because even though glaciers have receded and oceans of water have passed under the bridge, embarrassment is forever.
Like my friend, and like many another poor suffering mortal, I too retain ancient memories that make me cringe. A few of these acts, I'm sorry to say, are, like my friend's, instances of unjustified and petty violence. A larger category: the recollection of saying something stupid at a party or over dinner. Or a lame, feeble, failed witticism. An irony that was misunderstood and taken to be serious. A mispronounced word. The realization that my presence was unwelcome or that I had overstayed my welcome. The largest category of all: something that I did or said that was vain or pretentious or self-aggrandizing.
My Better Half, who knows that often, half-asleep, I will suddenly recall an embarrassing moment and will vent a profound sigh or pound my fist into the pillow, confronts the problem practically. She simply asks: "What year?" To which I respond, for example: "1954." And then she says: "Everyone who heard what you said has been dead for years. Go back to sleep." It's a good protocol and is moderately effective. But the hallmark of authentic embarrassment is that even though the offending act was performed in public, it will be recollected in solitude years later to disorder our tranquility and to disturb our rest. Whether the witnesses have long since forgotten the event (if they noticed it in the first place) or even if they've been underground for decades doesn't seem to moderate self-flagellation.
In point of fact, embarrassment is the only natural phenomenon that has tempted me to believe, even slightly, in an afterlife. If anything is eternal, it's embarrassment.
It is sometimes said that Western society has evolved from a shame culture to a guilt culture. In earlier ages, social disapproval kept the lid on our transgressive impulses. Nowadays, the theory goes, we've been psychologically transformed and have learned to internalize shame as guilt, so that we regulate ourselves without our fellow tribesman crying tut-tut and shame, shame, shame. Perhaps there's a bit of truth to this formula, but it's simplistic. In my own fragile ego, guilt has not supplanted shame; both emotions are thriving rather nicely, thank you very much.
Embarrassment is neither guilt nor shame, but a third thing that combines the two emotions -- as for example in the case of Joey Valachi, mafia hit man and stool pigeon, who once told an investigating committee, and I quote verbatim, "you can imagine my embarrassment when I killed the wrong guy." An awkward moment for Joey V., but whether its memory would be sufficient to disturb his pleasant dreams is not for me to guess. It is certainly embarrassing to all concerned that he would classify a murder as an embarrassment. Compare Macbeth in the same situation: "O full of scorpions is my mind, dear wife."
I guess I should be happy that my sleep is troubled by social gaffes rather than by crimes. Mini-scorpions, so to speak.
I feel your pain. I'm told I once wrote a poem containing the phrase "pagan plush master".
Posted by: Otis Jefferson Brown | May 29, 2008 at 12:20 PM