Stuffed in Locker

Sixth grade was sheer terror.  Why anyone would think that 11 and 12 year olds were big enough to go to Junior High is beyond me.  The ninth graders seemed to tower over us.  Some of them even had facial hair, for heavens sake.  Much of my time was spent sulking from one hallway from another, trying not to be noticed.  Like a small ant cowering for safety under one ground leaf to another, I would dot-to-dot myself down the hallway into the protective watch of the teachers that would stand by their doors between classes.  And why all this stress?  Locker stuffing.  Yes, that's right.  The favorite humiliation imposed on us sixth graders, dished out by the massive ninth graders, was to take us small subjects and stuff us into a locker.  Once inside one of the skinny halfway lockers, the door was shut, leaving you captive until some merciful Samaritan heard your pitiful knocking and released you.  All seemed to go well the first few weeks, and it seemed for a time that I was destined to dodge these random bullets of mortification.  Until one day.  I was grabbed by a ninth grader named LeGrande and a handful of his cronies, and before I knew it, I was encased in one of these tight caskets of pitch black darkness.  And then the worst thing of all happened (no, I didn't pee my pants).  I broke out crying.  Ouch, talk about the wrong thing to do.  They let me out, amidst cheers and laughter of "aw, he's crying" as I hurried away in shame.  I realized a couple years later that getting stuffed into a locker was really not that big of a deal, and learning to roll with event, rather than be petrified by it, may have resulted in my laughing, not crying, when it happened.  

LESSON LEARNED:  Don't sweat the small stuff.  So much of what happens to us in life doesn't really matter, and when it does, try and embrace it rather that fearing it.  

FEEDBACK:  WHAT EMBARRASSING EXPEREINCES HAVE YOU HAD THAT YOU LEARNED LESSONS FROM LATER ON?