"Outed" by your family

When you bring someone--a friend, boyfriend, doesn't matter who--home for the first time, your family is bound to say (or do) something embarrassing. They're your family; it's their job. If you're lucky, it'll be something minor, hopefully singular, and not worth mentioning in future conversations. If you're unlucky, it will be humiliating enough that a) your guest will never speak to you again or b) your guest will emerge armed with such teasing-worthy ammunition that you hope they will never speak to you again. The latter is what happened to me.

It started with the Allison Shuffle. This is a move--a dance, in fact--which I used to perform back when I was very young, when I got extremely upset. By extremely upset, I mean on-the-brink-of-throwing-a-tantrum upset: usually standing in the doorway of my parents' den, demanding something I couldn't have or whining about some sort of mandatory duty that they were making me do. I'd start stamping my feet as my pitch raised, since they inevitably would be very mild-mannered about the whole thing, which of course felt like they were ignoring me and was not achieving what I wanted. Then, my dad would, in his snarkiest voice, say, "There goes the Allison Shuffle," and off went my legs, in all directions, uncontrollably stamping and shuffling and flailing to beat the band.

This story, of course, was relayed to my guest, R___, within the first hour of his arrival at my hometown residence. I suppose my family wanted to hit him with the most embarrassing possible story first, since the next few were really just hyperbolic illustrations of character traits R___ already believed me to possess.

For instance: one day, I arrived home from school and, in a huge huff, slammed a test down on the table. My dad, who was sitting at the table, looked at the test. Seeing that it had a 92% scribbled at the top, he asked me what was wrong. In complete dismay, I answered, "It's not 100." My dad really relished telling R___ that story.

Meanwhile, a story my sister reveled in telling was that of my coming home, climbing to the top of our stairs, and shouting "F***!" at the top of my lungs. Clearly I had assumed no one was home, and I was very frustrated at something a certain love interest of mine had said/not said or done/not done at the time. I rarely expressed my frustration at this "certain someone," and so, thinking that I had the house all to myself, I had decided to "let loose." Apparently, my sister found this very amusing and, moreover, worthy of sharing with R___, who also found it quite amusing.

Luckily, apart from those rather embarrassing stories, I emerged otherwise unscathed. And what's more, I intend to be the "guest" this summer and dig into R___'s family archive of embarrassing stories....