Sometimes I forget where I am.

Do you ever forget where you are?  This is an embarrassing and troublesome problem, and it happens to me on the regular.  Here are some examples, which include moments of forgetting I am in public, forgetting I am in math class, and forgetting that I am not supposed to do really embarrassing things at the bank.

Sometimes I forget I am in public. My fiance has to remind me, usually when I start talking really loudly about my toilet paper preferences in the grocery store. He'll reach for the Cottonelle, and I'll say something like, "I'm not a fan of Cottonelle. I mean, it pretty much flakes off all over the place when I wipe. It's kind of gross. Let's get Charmin. That is some high quality TP. It's sturdy yet soft, and I am not afraid of it disintegrating on me. With Cottonelle, before you know it, you're wiping with your bare hand."

I hope I didn't just scare you away with the toilet paper example.  If I did, I am sorry.  If I didn't, thank you for staying and please continue reading.


As a kid, I forgot where I was all the time, and it usually happened at school. Math class? Nope. I was thinking about something else. Who knows what, really. It could have been a number of things, such as the latest O.C. episode, or how much I'd rather be at home sleeping or watching Rugrats re-runs while eating Cheetos. In high school, a popular thought that came into my mind and ultimately distracted me was, I am pretty sure I left my hair straightener on.  I should call my mom right away and make sure she unplugs it.  

The scary thing is, I never even noticed I was totally spacing out until I was called on to answer a question or provide some kind of input that was on topic. Sometimes I'd say a totally random number, just to see if it was somehow miraculously the answer they were looking for. Sometimes I'd say, "I don't know."  Other times, I would ask the teacher to please repeat the question, hoping this strategy will buy me some time to suddenly remember what we were talking about.  Instead, this strategy usually resulted in giving me a few extra seconds before saying, "I don't know," or, "832?"  It is not fun to forget where you are when you are sitting in math class.  It's embarrassing, and it causes everyone in the room to become concerned about your level of IQ.

And lastly, my number one I-forgot-where-I-was moment: I was around 4 years old and was standing in line at the bank with my mom. Her pant legs caught my eye, because they were at my eye-level, but also because they zipped up on the sides. I thought that was cool; pants with a zipper on the side! I got lost in my fascination with the side pants zipper. For some unknown reason beyond my control, I became overcome with the impulse to tug on that zipper. And I did. I pulled the side zipper down a few inches in the middle of the bank, caught a glimpse of her underwear, and then exclaimed loudly, "That's not your zipper, that's your underwear!" To this day, that moment goes down in history as one of my mother's most embarrassing moments. You're welcome, Mom.

Readers, do you have any examples of times where you either spaced out horribly in public or just completely forgot where you were, resulting in doing something inappropriate or embarrassing? If you have kids, have they said or done completely embarrassing things in public?