A
moment during which everybody present is made to feel intensely
uncomfortable. The worst of
these come about in an
innocent fashion and can be quite
difficult to dispel. All anybody
trapped in these situations really wants is to
forget about it and move on, but it isn't always
possible, as my
example will
illustrate.
Scene:
Lblack,
Sister and
Mother are in the family room, watching the
television. A
commercial comes on, advertising those marvels of
feminine hygeine,
tampons.
Lblack: Are those like
napkins?
Sister: (bursts out
laughing)
Lblack: (with all the
indignation of a nine year old): What's so funny?
What are they?!
(
Sister begins to look alarmed. Shows no inclination of talking.)
Mother: They're for
girls.
Lblack: What do you mean they're for girls?
Boys can't use them?
Sister: (laughs, involuntarily)
Lblack: Stop that!
Mother: Well, you see, girls aren't the same as boys...
Lblack: I know, they don't have
wee-wees!
Sister: (sneakily leaves room)
Mother: Well, even more than that.
Lblack: What do you mean?
Mother: I suppose you're old enough... (
Mother gives lengthy explanation of
menstrual cycle and the tools used to tame it, carefully denoting the differences between tampons and
pads. She then launches into lengthy explanation of how sex works, why
sex works and who should be having sex and who should not.)
Lblack: (dazed, possibly bleeding from the ears) Goodbye.
Fin.
For the first bit of conversation, I'm sure that both
Mother and
Sister were praying that I'd be distracted and
shut the fuck up. For the second bit,
Sister had managed to sneak away and so it was
Lblack wishing to God that somebody would die so that the conversation would end. From what I understand,
Mother was none too fond of having to explain everything from menstruation to contraception to her nine-year-old son when all she really wanted to do was watch some
TV.
This was an
uncomfortable moment, not to be confused with an
embarassing situation.