It was an honor to be asked to pray. Every Sabbath morning during the summer, the entire camp gathered in the outdoor amphitheater situated on top of a hill in the central Sierras with a beautiful view of Wawona Dome to the east.

Sabbath morning worship was literally and metaphorically lighter than its emotionally intense counterpart, Friday evening vespers, which often involved a re-enactment of the crucifixion of Jesus and an altar call that would bring a hundred  children to tears as we re-re-committed our lives to Christ. But there was also something sexually confusing about having a deeply spiritual experience of faith inextricably associated with a cute 19-year-old rock climbing instructor dressed in nothing but a loin cloth and strapped to a wooden cross.

So when the morning came, the hormonally charged spiritual conversions of the evening before gave way to joyful praise songs and fully clothed skits. And on the morning I had been asked to give the opening prayer, I stood on the wooden stage next to the camp pastor, waiting my turn as he read the day’s Scripture.

It was the mid-1980s. And in the fashion of the day, I was proudly wearing my brand new acid wash jean skirt.

My cabin mates who were sitting close to the front row began to point and whisper at me. I couldn’t understand what they were saying. But I looked in the direction they were pointing only to discover that my fly was down.

In the way fighter pilots or race car drivers can survey a situation and make important tactical decisions in just a few seconds, I weighed my options.

1) In front of 200 campers and staff, I could pretend I didn’t see the obvious undone state of my zipper. Likely, this would spare me the greatest amount of embarrassment as I’m sure now that only a handful of people must have noticed my zipper was down. But what about the people who did know? Would they all gather at the back of the church afterwards to re-play the moment and laugh at me behind my back all over again? There is a special kind of childhood humiliation borne out of unknowingly being the butt of a joke only to find out about it later. And somehow this option was the worst I could imagine.

2) Instead of appearing oblivious, I could take control of the situation by simply reaching down and zipping it up. Effectively, this would be saying to the whole camp: Yeah, I know my zipper is down. So what? It’s no big whoop to pull it up. ‘Cause I am acid wash cooool. The problem with this option is that there’s absolutely no good way to fix your zipper in public without being a little creepy about it. Lord knows, I was already a sinus-afflicted, mouth-breathing ragamuffin. I didn’t need to add creepster to my profile.

3) In the end, I opted for an another option all together. I just took the whole damn thing off. I was wearing boxer-type shorts underneath anyway–tomboy insurance–so why not just surrender the skirt without a fight? Somehow it felt worse to be helplessly exposed in public than to fully own the fact that I was exposed by exposing myself further. Oh, you think I have a problem with my zipper being down? Let me show you how wrong you are. I don’t even need this stupid zipper. Pow! The joke’s on you! The timing of it was spectacular. I managed to take off my skirt and fold it up at the very moment the pastor finished the Scripture reading. I think someone in the audience gasped. Then things got really quiet. Not the sacred kind of quiet. The oh-my-god-is-this-for-real quiet. The pastor looked befuddled and conflicted as he turned to give me the microphone, like he was deciding if it really was a good idea to let the wild monkey standing next to him take over the church service. But he gave me the microphone. I held it in one hand, my skirt in the other, and began to pray.

If you understand the logic of that decision, then you also understand two of the most unfortunate rules of my life:  1)  No one puts Baby in a corner. Baby will put herself in a corner, thank you very much, and, 2) If you find yourself in an embarrassing situation, just make it worse.

With this said, I would like to make two confessions and apologies.

First, I would like to apologize for the time that I triggered a fake medical emergency after I attempted a cannonball off the camp high dive during the “Pool Olympics” but butt-flopped hard instead. (Summer camp seemed to be a place ripe for these kinds of things. Apparently, when I was away from my super safety-conscious parents, I tended to take more risks. Like cannonballs off high dives.) Instead of just shaking it off and allowing a few moments of laughter at my expense, I rose to the top of the water in the deadman’s float, as though the butt-flop had left me unconscious. But then I “heroically” swim-hobbled to the side where I then explained that my leg was numb from the fall. This meant I got to ride in the camp ambulance down to the nurses’ station where I was placed under observation for several hours. Everyone was so genuinely concerned. But my butt didn’t even bruise.

Second, I would like to apologize to the staff person at the Round Table in Oakhurst, CA who was tasked with undoing the damage I did in the women’s bathroom on opening day of the restaurant in the late 1990’s. You see, I tend to have what one might call “healthy” bowel movements. And by “healthy,” I mean fat. I am always nervous to take a shit in a house with old plumbing because it seems like there is a very strong possibility that I could clog the toilet. Let me tell you, buying a plunger in a Target full of shoppers when you have nothing else to buy and nothing to hide behind is a humbling experience. And I know that kind of humbling well.

But in retrospect, I’m sure I’m not the first person to have clogged the toilet of a pizza joint. I mean, the people who would dare poop there have just eaten a whole bunch of pizza and salad. Instead of taking the somewhat embarrassing but mature path of informing the Round Table manager of my need for “plunger assistance,” I panicked. Without unlocking the bathroom stall door, I crawled out from underneath it, hurried back to my friends and said, “We have to leave. Now.” We left Round Table like we had just robbed it.

To the person who was required to take care of my mess, I really am sorry about that. I don’t know if it will make you feel any better about that day, but since then life has continued to give me opportunities to own this truth about my colon. And I have learned the courage it takes to never again abandon a toilet in shame.

These moments, of course, are on the weirder, funnier side of what it has meant in my life to be wrong or to experience failure. I also know what it means to double down on a situation that is causing you real pain and heartache but which you can’t bear to let go of for fear of what it will look like to everyone who is watching–even though it turns out people aren’t really watching you as closely or caring about what they see like you think they are. I know what it means to find inventive ways of rationalizing your choices even when life is demonstrating that you need to choose differently. I know what it’s like to back away from things that require risk after getting your butt slapped on your first try. Or to feign weakness to engender sympathy in those same moments rather than to simply step into one of the greatest truths of life–that sometimes we fail. Sometimes our zipper is down. Sometimes we clog toilets. Sometimes our beliefs aren’t true. Sometimes we are helplessly exposed in ways that undo us. Sometimes the choices we make don’t serve us in the end. Sometimes the promises we make in good faith cannot be kept. Sometimes you are not who you believed yourself to be. Sometimes you forget that nobody’s really watching you. You’re only watching yourself, beating yourself up for things that really in the larger scheme of things have the significance and fashion shelf-life of an acid wash jean skirt.