Top Ten Thursdays - Uncomfortable Situations

Here we are at Thursday again and a topic that I can think of loads of examples but not all of them can be published for the general public to read. We're talking uncomfortable situations and several of these are going to be ones that I've witnessed as they're definitely worth mentioning.

1. I have a slight problem with maths when it comes to foreign money to the point that when we were in Barcelona several years ago we were chased down by a waiter after we'd left the restaurant as I'd underpaid by quite a bit. Very red face and now I always make Ken check how much I've put down.

2. When I was a student nurse I was talking to a blind man whilst the cricket was on the tv and when there was a really good catch I said, "did you see that?" Yes, I know, he couldn't see it as he was blind - thankfully he thought it was quite amusing.

3. Talking to a man with a scar on his face when the person with me told him he had dirt on his face!! Definitely one of those moments when you wish the ground would open up and swallow you - the poor man politely explained that he couldn't remove it as it was a scar.

4. Another student nurse incident - I had said something which made the male patients I was with laugh and when they said that I was always good for making them laugh I replied that my aim in life was to give them pleasure!!!! I think my face may have gone puce I was so mortified and you can imagine the comments I got from the male patients for the rest of my time on that ward.

5. One of the most cringeworthy moments I've ever witnessed was at our local church in Tasmania. The lady next to me had been away on holiday for a couple of months and during that time the lady sat behind me's husband had died. Lady next to me turned around and said "your husbands not with you today, is he not well?" It felt like it was happening in slow motion it was so awful.

6. Another nursing one - believe me when I say that I could write a book. This was when I was qualified and one of the older gentlemen that I was looking after had wanted a bath. He didn't get his bath because I ran the bath over and flooded out half the ward. What made it worse was that when his family came to visit him and asked him if he'd had his bath his reply was "no because the big sheila with the big glasses ran the bath over."

(Have you noticed that we could change uncomfortable situations to mortifying ones?)

7. In cooking class in my first year of highschool I used the wrong flour (why it was out I'll never know) to make my cake so compared to everyone else's mine looked like a discus and felt a bit like one too. My teacher then proceeded to flip said cake discus back and forth between her hands whilst telling the rest of the class how not to bake a cake. Totally embarrassed I took my cake home and insisted on eating some of it just to prove it was edible.

8. Sort of a nursing one - we used to play lots of pranks on the medical students when they stayed in the nurses home on placement. Well, they got their own back one day and I was the recipient. They plastered my ankle and my wrist and kept me held down in a locked room until it dried. This meant that we had to wait until night time and get one of the orderlies to let us in the back entrance of casualty so that they could cut the plaster off in a darkened room so that no senior nurses knew what was going on.

9. Something that nursing has taught me is to never assume you know what the relationship is between two people when you meet them. Lots of times I've seen others make the mistake of asking if the younger man is someone's son when they are the husband/partner - I don't know why it's younger men with older women that so many people struggle with but they do.

10. This one is reserved for all those incidents which I can't mention here - just know my face was a delightful tomato colour every time.

So that's it for today's top ten - what sort of uncomfortable situations have you experienced. Before you go, pop over to Tamara's blog, Cofessions of a part-time working mom to see what my fellow bloggers have come up with - click HERE to visit.

Until next time, be good, stay safe, and smile at people you don't know.

Pamela & Ken
xxxxxxxxxxxx