When you want to crawl under a rock......

Picture the scene. It's Saturday morning, still quite early, and I'm at Pak n Save Kilbirnie with Noah doing the weekly shop.

I've just passed through the fruit and veg area and I'm heading down past all the meat. I get to the end of this row, lost in my own world and suddenly a girl with a pamphlet stops me and says: 'hey we're giving away some free Inghams frozen chickens if you can shoot a hoop with Irene van Dyk'.



Ah, no pressure right?! She's only THE most famous netballer around, and there she is standing right there. Wowsers, she's tall. I look up at the free standing netball goal they've brought in for the occasion and think 'golly me when did those goals get to be so tall or have I shrunk?'

And I'm still blaming it on the fact that I got a little star struck standing next to this amazing sportswoman, but do you think I could shoot a hoop to save my life? No sirree! It could also have a lot to do with the fact that I never was very good at netball either. So TEN shots later and I STILL hadn't managed to get a goal despite it bouncing off the rim a couple of times.

And a crowd was gathering.

The longer I tried the more wayward my shots became. The next thing you know, I'd managed to lose the ball behind a whole stack of boxes filled with toilet roll. Oh the shame of it!

At this point I suggested it might be nice to give someone else a turn.

The girls from Inghams took great pity on my extreme embarrassment and gave me a voucher for a free chicken ($13) despite my ineptitude.



And if I wasn't already feeling embarrassed enough, the fact that as I walked away a middle aged woman and a 10-year old kid both got their balls in the hoop first time sealed this as one of my most embarrassing public moments ever!

Despite this, I do think its actually healthy from time to time to find yourself in an embarrassing situation, to remind us that we're all human and we shouldn't get too over confident in our own abilities. There always a moment waiting right around the corner to bring us right back with a thump to earth.

And there are some things in this life that we were born to do but clearly being a netballer is not my calling!

Do you have an embarrassing story where you just wanted to crawl under a rock and die? Do share!