I'm Molly Mae, the voice over at MaeLiveFree, and I'm pretty excited to offer up some grade-A embarrassing story over here today! Lucky for me, and you, it's a love story too. This guest appearance came about in competition (which is actually pretty typical of me and Amy, as are embarrassing stories really). When I recommended choice literature for her to read, and then noticed that she was as unmotivated to read it as I was I said, "Hey, let's say whoever finishes first does a post for the other?" She agreed.

Amy and I go a long way back! We met on my second day of school in Marsing, that little town in Idaho she loves, when we were ten year olds. She was my first best friend in that new school. Then my nemesis, and back and forth it went all the way to graduation. We were pretty similar, both oldest siblings, both loved reading and singing cheesy pop music, both highly opinionated, both royal pains I'm sure as well... We could have been a great pair of friends if we didn't insist on butting heads, and when we were, we were. For some reason though, we couldn't resist a little competition. During the times we got along we had a lot of fun, like at our 8th grade basketball season end party (it's still weird that I ever played basketball) when we were in this weird and apparently hilarious competition of offensive and non-sensical words with Cera and Danielle at a Chinese restaurant. We've also witnessed some embarrassing moments of each other's.  Like me tripping up the stairs at the basketball game we went to at the same party, and tearing my shin up. Or when Amy forgot the words to her solo at one of our Christmas concerts... In the spirit of our history, and her penchants for sharing embarrassing stories here that's what I want to share with you (her awesome readers) today.

On June 7, 2009, I met this random stranger of a guy on facebook (Myspace was losing steam). He sent me a friend request and I accepted just so I could look at his private profile and write him off as a creep...and instead my curiosity was piqued. I thought there was a really good chance that I could love him. Crazy, I know. Especially considering I had just broken off my engagement with my high school sweetheart. Even more so because I had decided that I was really thrilled at the prospect of self-exploration. I told my mom maybe the DAY BEFORE that I would never date someone I met on the internet...then he showed up. It was the worst timing for romance too! My dad had just moved out, and my great grandma was in bad shape with dementia in a nursing home. But for some reason I felt so compelled to know this guy, so I called him out, and messaged him saying that we could be friends as long as he actually wanted to socialize. He thought my initiative was charming and eloquent, so we started talking, via message and text, and I knew I was in trouble! We texted almost non-stop for two days, he stayed up late to talk to me while I stayed up for 64 hours straight in the nursing home leading up to my grandma's passing. Then we decided to meet. He drove 26 miles to pick me up for our first date (I didn't have a car or license at 19!) and when I let him in the door my heart hit the roof. I KNEW that he was my life from that moment on, it was like I'd been hit by a speeding train, and that he had a specific gravitational pull that affected only me. It was the craziest. When we got in his truck he said I smelled delicious and I giggled because my perfume was DKNY Be Delicious.


Fast forward through half a day spent at his apartment just talking like old friends and watching a movie...I meet his roomate, and then his best friend and his girlfriend. The two latter, this fella, and myself decide to go out to his favorite sushi restaurant for dinner. I'm equal parts excited and mortified. I had always wanted to try sushi, but I wasn't the biggest fan of seafood. So off we went in his truck, onto the freeway, when he realized he forgot his wallet. His best friend laughed and remarked on how common that was, and we exited to go back and get it. We arrive at the sushi restaurant and the gentlemen proceed to do the ordering, they know what's good, I trust them. The sushi arrives and we share 4 rolls. Thing to note: I've never REALLY used chopsticks before, so they give me a lesson. I managed to grab a piece of the Spicy Hawaiian roll and bring it to my mouth. Everyone is talking and carrying on, and I'm trying to figure out how to eat it without looking gross or stupid because it's huge! I decide to bite off half of it and the whole thing starts crumbling like a old house being demolished. My mouth is full, and I'm helpless, and suddenly all eyes are on me... I quickly bring my free hand up to cover my mouth and attempt to chew and push the rest into my mouth while they are looking at me: one smugly, one laughing, and one acting like nothing is happening. The latter being my date thank God, he doesn't seem like I've embarrassed him. The good news is that it was delicious, and also that it wasn't the last date like I feared.

We were pretty much inseparable after that first date, I practically lived at his apartment at least half of the week until I did move in, in October. Somewhere in that still-dating-and-not-yet-one-hundred-percent-comfortable stage we were out at KFC eating lunch, those bowls with mashed potatoes, corn, chicken, cheese, and gravy AKA failure piles in a sadness bowl (forgive the strong language, but watch it, do it). We were sitting in a booth, facing each other, and talking about something that I was apparently excited about and I had set my plastic spork down in the bowl to talk with my hands. Are you starting to see the danger here? No, read on...at some point my hand started to come down, hovering somewhere above the spork for a split second (imagine this scene in slow motion, it's best) before coming down and scattering flinging the heck out of mashed potatoes all over me, my face, the table, and probably across the restaurant, but none on my laughing boyfriend. Some guys might have up and run out on a girl then, or grabbed me and got me out of there fast, but he didn't. If I hadn't already known he was the one, I would have learned it then.

As if those two ugly faced, slobby food scenarios weren't bad enough, things like this happen with me all the time...dipping my hair in farina, slopping coffee all over my face and chest, dropping a glob of ketchup on my swaddled nursing newborn, etc. Even today! After spending 10 minutes hand grinding coffee beans for my aeropress coffee, I set out to remove the bottom canister of the hand grinder and dropped the grounds all over the floor. This time my now husband was covered in my shame as well, standing a little too close when it happened.

I'm lucky to have such a soul to witness my awkward encounters though, and reminded of this everyday. He wrote in his wedding vows that it wasn't despite things like me flinging mashed potatoes in my face that he loved me, but because of them. If that's not a victory for the grace challenged like myself, then I don't know what is.


Thanks for having me here! Maybe I'll see you around my corner of the internet sometime. ;)