Monday, June 14, 2010

By Any Other Name


Because I won the Oh My Blog Award (thank you Robin!) I am going to tell you about my most humiliating moment. In a lifetime of humiliating moments, it was hard to pick one, but I've tried my best. I tried to balance great moment of happiness and triumph with crushing embarassment. That should do it, right?

In late 1992 I was ordering the wedding invitations for my marriage to Husband and was having some trouble with the wording. I had been married before, see, and I had not gone back to my maiden name after my divorce, mostly because I hated it like poison. My dad, an immigrant, had come to this country as Harry Burstein but had changed our last name to Burt. My twenty-six onerous years as Linda Burt (just say that ten times fast and you'll see what I mean) weighed heavily on me when I was getting divorced at twenty-nine. There was no way I was going back to that name. So I kept my ex-husband's name, Maric*.

So how to word the invitations? Linda Jayne Maric? Linda Burt Maric? I did the latter and everything moved forward.

The day of the wedding dawned. I got to the venue. Big sign outside: The Maric/Pressman wedding. I cringed. I could now see that when I kept my ex-husband's name I hadn't quite thought this thing through completely. Like to the next marriage day.

Then we got married. The chuppah. The Rabbi. The rings. Whew. I was officially Linda Pressman. That should be the end of that torment, right?

But then the Best Man stood up to make a toast. To the Marics, whom he thought were my family. Who, of course, were not there since they were my ex-husband's family. Would any woman want the ghost of Husbands Past brought up at the wedding of Husbands Present?

The Best Man's wife gave his coat a hard yank and said in a loud whisper, "Burt! Her family's name is Burt!" and he continued with the toast.

But still.

Have any humiliating moments you'd like to share? Excruciating moments at your wedding? Toast difficulties? Or would you just like to join in the chorus and laugh at me?

*ex-husband's name changed.

I'd like to pass the Oh My Blog award to the following bloggers, all of whom I think may have some fun with this one:

Maria at Mom of Three Seeks Sanity
Amber at Making the Moments Count
mommymommymommy at KISS - Keep It Simple Sister

The rules of the Award are:

1. Get really excited that you got the coolest award EVER!
2. Choose ONE of the following options of accepting the OMB award:
   (a) Get really drunk and blog for 15 minutes straight, or for as long as you can focus.
   (b) Write about your most embarrassing moment.
   (c) Write a “Soundtrack of your childhood” post.
   (d) Make your next blog a ‘vlog’/video blog. Basically, you’re talking to the camera about whatever.
   (e) Take a picture of yourself first thing in the morning, before you do anything else (hair, make up,
        etc) and post it.
3. Pass the award on to at least three, but preferably more, awesome bloggers as yourself.
    Don’t forget to tell them.

17 comments:

  1. Thank you Linda! I am leaving for a vacation this week, but will come back to the award upon my return.

    I love your blog!

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  2. In San Diego they used to have a radio show that had daughters/sons call in with the most embarassing moments their mothers had caused. Then they'd call the moms to see if they could guess what the moment was. I was always mortified one of my kids would call in. But then I realized there were too many mortifying stories. Here's one: When Kelly was in fifth grade she was practicing for her graduation ceremony. I went to pick her up and she was in tears. "What's wrong?" "Brittney was picking on me again." I leapt out of the car. "Where is she? I'm going to give that girl--" "Mom, get in the car." I ignored this sage advice and went after the ten year old. Fortunately for Brittney AND me she was gone. I blame mama bear, but still...

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  3. Hi Linda, well that certainly made for one of those wedding moments you'd rather everyone forgot but I think most weddings have at least one of those!

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  4. Great story Linda! That is what you want ~ a MEMORABLE wedding!!!!!

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  5. That is HILARIOUS!! I mean embarrassing! Hee hee.
    I bet your husband was a great sport through it all. : )

    Thank you! I have just the post in mind...

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  6. Congrats on the award. And nice story too, I can see where you got a bit red faced over the best man and his words.

    A month back i was so honored with this award, here is my post where I shared my own humiliation...
    http://responsibility199.blogspot.com/2010/05/day-29-11-progress.html

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  7. Ugh. (And funny.) And good thing that what people remember most at a great wedding is the happy couple being happy... and hoping that no one falls off the chairs. (You didn't, right?)

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  8. Very funny. Again I must say I love your writing! I have that award to which I still need to respond. Was going to do a soundtrack of my childhood/life, but the embarrassing moments in my past are clamoring for air time! Congratulations on the well deserved award!

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  9. That definitely makes for an awkward wedding moment :) love the new design!

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  10. Oh dear. An embarrassing moment at your own wedding? Yipes. But knowing you, you took it in stride!

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  11. mommymommymommy, Have fun on vacation. Can't wait to see what you write for the award!

    Michelle, I can relate! How many times have I HATED kids whom I felt were bullying my kid or whatever? One illuminating day I drove for a field trip with a bunch of these boys and my son in the car. Suddenly I saw every obnoxious thing he was doing, goading everyone on. From then on I knew I had to drive on field trips once every six months or so, just to monitor his personality defects!

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  12. Aging, Robin and Amber: my husband has always been quite the sport about the ex-husband! Very, very kind - better than I'd be probably! And, who knows, maybe that open bar we had played a role in this!

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  13. BLW, funny you should bring that up. The WORST part of the wedding (even worse than the toast) was being schlepped around on the slippery chair in my even more slippery gown! They are lucky I didn't break my neck that day! For Bar Mitzvahzilla's Bar Mitzvah (that's a mouthful!) I said, "No chair for me!" He was the only one tormented by the chair.

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  14. Leslie, I can't wait to read your humiliating moment because now misery NEEDS company!

    Corinne, thanks on the blog design. Now if I could just stop messing with it!

    TKW, up until now it's just been a funny story. Now it's public humiliation, on purpose. Oy.

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  15. Patrick, I went over and read your Day 29 post and Wow! That's something that could give me nightmares! Nice prank! But here's to writing about our humiliating moments!

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  16. Thanks Linda! I am working on it...No doubt, there is no shortage of humiliation over here, either!

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  17. Well crap and double crap! I got this award last week and wrote up my post about it before I left for vacation and yours was the first name on my list of people to pass it on to. Sigh. I am going to leave you on there when I post it:)

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