In my senior year of high school, my school gave us the opportunity to take the SAT on a school day. I woke up earlier than usual that morning, even before the sun rose. I ate a proper filling breakfast, and checked that I had my two #2 pencils, calculator, and my water bottle. I caught the train, and reached school with enough time to walk at a slower pace than my usual ankle-burning stride. I opened my email to double-check the room assignment. It was room 405, on the fourth floor near my usual math classroom. I went to the end of the hallway where rooms 400 to 410 were. 402, 403, 404, 406 was a supply closet … There was no 405. Instead of checking the hallway again, I confidently assumed that there was a mistake in the email the school sent me. I entered room 404 and found an empty seat at the back. I took my calculator and pencils out of my bag and sorted them neatly on the desk. I nervously smiled at the person next to me, for we were in this together — it was us against standardized testing, for real. I took a deep breath and waited for the proctor to come up and ask for my name to hand me my Scantron.
“Your name doesn’t seem to be on the roster. Are you sure you’re in the right room?”
“Yeah, can I check the roster?” Because I have some ability to find my name when the adult in the room can’t … I can’t find my name.
“Was 404 the room that was in your email?”
“Well, it was 405, but I couldn’t find it. I don’t think it exists or it’s a closet or something.” In a very matter of fact way.
“Ok, follow me.” I pack my things up and walk past the rows of students. The proctor points to the room directly across the hall. Room 405 appears. Almost magically.
“Oh, okay, thank you. Sorry, it’s been a rough morning.” I sheepishly laugh, knowing that the morning was actually rather swell — I am just a bit of a klutz.
I think this experience was definitely top three on my list of the most embarrassing things that happened in my life. Yes, writing this out is a way for me to work on getting over it.
When I start growing close to someone, I usually tell them this story. It’s overall a purely innocent and funny incident, even though it was painfully traumatizing back then. I remember while on the Writing and Language section of the test, I was still warm with embarrassment. But years later, though there are still hints of the embarrassment left remaining, it is more of a humorous story than anything else. I also learned not to doubt the school system so readily, and to ask for help, because I very well believe that if I asked someone for directions to 405 before entering a room mindlessly, these events may have been avoided. It was hard to move on from the incident, especially when I would have to encounter the people in the room nearly every day, but I realized that it was better to think of it as an opportunity to learn from a mistake rather than spend the rest of my life dwelling on what people thought. After the SAT room incident, I was thinking of becoming emo for a while and turning into the most nonchalant person in the school. But that would have been silly. (I tried for a while, but I failed.) In some situations, as bad as it sounds, people just don’t forget about what happened, and you can’t change that, but rather, you learn to live with it and not let it define you, or change who you are.
When something embarrassing happens to me, an overwhelming wave of dread spreads over me, enveloping my body with this weirdly warm but chilling embrace. I’d want to just huddle in a corner and let the feeling soak a bit. I would often go to friends and tell them about the whole ordeal, ask for any sort of advice or reassurance that they have to offer, or just be in their company to make me forget about what happened. In an earnest search for comfort, I am hit by one of these lines: “People aren’t going to remember” or “It’s not a big deal,” oh, and my personal favorite: “It’s not that deep.”
I stick to my belief that people do remember, and maybe sometimes, it is that deep. Some people do remember when you make that mistake. That embarrassing moment that happened five years ago? To be completely honest with you, and I’ll hold your hand when I say this, someone probably still remembers till this day. Your walk of shame might have been used as a story between two friends to fill in the silence, or as a small story shared drunkenly over a group of peers one Friday night, or a cautionary tale that people reference, narrating it as if you were the poor hare that lost the race in that one fable.
How do I know? Because, unfortunately, I am one of the people that remember.
One time I was on the subway going back home; there were never-ending delays, and the train was packed. My legs were about to give in to gravity, but I wouldn’t dare squat or sit on the train’s floor due to the silent rules of the subway. But this one lady decided it was the day to rebel against societal norms. She left her standing position and proceeded to sit with her knees up, leaning on the train door while looking at her phone. When the door inevitably opened, her comfortable position became unsteady. She caught herself before she fell, stood up, straightened herself out, and played it off coolly by looking at her phone again. It was a bit funny, or maybe I’m a bad person. I told her story to a lot of friends. Yeah, I am a bad person.
So, where do we go from here? It gets tiring to hear people say that no one will remember an incident that’s fresh and buzzing in your mind. Personally, not only is it not true but it is also unhelpful, especially at a time when it is almost impossible to feel like the people that witnessed it will ever forget. In a way, it undermines the person’s feelings at a moment when they feel vulnerable, whether they forget the incident or not the following week.
Rather than the mindset of “people will forget in a few days,” I try to shift my way of coping and reassuring others, to how we can learn from that mistake and present a better image of ourselves in the future. (I, unfortunately, have not reached the level of enlightenment yet where I don’t care about what other people think of me.) I go on with the idea that I will live in a world where people will remember what happened, which doesn’t have to be as hard as it sounds. I think it is more productive to decide what to do next rather than dwelling on judgment. Of course, I definitely have to give it a moment for the incident to fully sink in and maybe play it back a couple of times before I can actually attempt to turn the embarrassing experience into a catalyst for growth. In time, it will become a funny story to tell over a cup of coffee or to write in the newspaper. And in times of solitude, as you’re sipping a cup of hot chai by the window, you’ll reflect on how far you’ve come since you walked into the wrong room on SAT day so many years ago.
