Low Down Dirty Shame

Every adult has a horrific, gut wrenching, hell dwelling, embarrassing story from their childhood that has made them wish the neuralyzer from Men in Black was real. I happen to have one of those stories, so buckle up and prepare to have cringeworthy feelings arise. This all started when I was fifteen, at which point my was relatively boring, I had had a few embarrassing moments occur but most of which I was able to repress. Until that point, I pretty much had a handle on my life, as a kid I got hospitalized a lot with one sickness or another, or some new found allergy that had arisen.

So this all starts on a Wednesday night having dinner with my family. It also happens to be my dad’s birthday, so my mom was cooking a storm in the kitchen, all my dad's favorite food: rice, twice baked potato, pork loins, and spicy tilapia. I already knew to stay away from the pork loins as I found out years back that I was allergic to pork. If I ate pork, my lips would swell up, having me resemble a Bratz doll or someone who went a little too far with the lip injections to have a permanent pout when I pose. But I digress, so i decided to dig into the other foods at the table. At this point, I was pretty sure I was only allergic to pork, milk, eggs and dust mites, and none of those were on the table despite the pork so I dug into everything else. This happens to be my first time trying tilapia, I frankly was not a seafood fan so I never had tilapia before , so I tried it and to my surprise it was delectable. So delectable in fact, that I had second helpings, enjoying every bite. After dinner, my mom brought out a cake which my family all enjoyed ( not me, milk and egg allergy you recall), so we sang happy birthday and we were off to bed as it was a school night.

The rest of the night went by peacefully, until a sudden itching began around my privates but I was far too involved in getting a good night's rest to pay it any mind. The itching persisted, and in retrospect I should have given it more attention but I just wanted sleep.The itching died down, so i'm thinking it was probably my pajamas, my body was not used to the fabric or something. Suddenly my alarm rings, and I wake up to get ready for school, so I head to the bathroom completely disregarding the slight itch in my pants. I feel the need to relieve myself so I head to the toilet and pee without looking down completely oblivious to the itching. Finally I decided to look down, and a shiver went down my spine, because I realised what was causing the itching.

My penis had swollen all around, and suddenly felt the itching a bit more intensely. I let a scream, alarming my mom. She comes to the bathroom to know what was happening, at which point I beg her to get my dad, forgetting he had already left for work. She explains he has left and what was the problem. I refused to tell her, which only raised the panic of the situation. Now I’m freaking out and so is she,and without an alternative, I decided to tell her about my predicament. My mom, as calmly as possible,says she needs to see it in order to understand the situation, to which I adamantly refuse. She says it's not a big deal to show her as she has already seen me naked as a baby, to which I retort that there have been some changes since then and I was not going to allow to see them. She then states that she has to see it to know if she should call an ambulance, it may not be as serious as I think. With no alternative, I opened the bathroom door and with all the power within me, I showed her my mom...everything. At which point my mom, without showing an emotion decides we should try the Epipen first and if it doesn’ go down, we will hed to the doctor. She brought the Epipen, to which I demanded to do myself ( trying to reclaim a piece of my masculinity and shame that I had lost), which she obliged.

I spent the rest of the day avoiding eye contact with her, wishing a meteor would just strike me where I stood. If it was possible to die from embarrassment, I’m pretty sure I would be on a slab in the morgue with a baffled medical examiner. On the plus side, I got to skip school and my mom never mentioned the ordeal to anyone, at least I hope not, I could never come back from the shame if anyone else knew.