The sugared chin incident

After all the writing about trauma these past few weeks, I want to start with something a bit more lighthearted today.

Today, I write about the sugared chin incident.  This happened about a week ago.

In an effort to make sure I managed a breakfast one Tuesday morning, I tempted myself with a cherry danish.  I have a slow appetite in the morning, and it sometimes takes a bit of bribery to get some breakfast down.  So, this danish was a real treat for me—I snagged one at a bakery near my home and took it with me to the office.  I managed to eat about half of it before my first session began.

It was delicious—fresh, still warm from the ovens, and with a wonderful ratio of icing to cherry to bread.  Ratios like these are very important, I think.

I tucked the second half of the danish back into its paper bag and forgot about it for the rest of the morning.

After my morning appointments, I met a colleague for a meeting over coffee.  I had met her for the first time in a networking meeting a few weeks prior, and I wanted to make a good impression.  We talked at length about a workshop series I am developing, and she expressed an interest in collaborating on a project together.  We scheduled another meeting to discuss the idea more in depth.

“Awesome!” I thought to myself.  “I’m really on fire today!”  And I finished the last of my chai before returning to the office.

Imagine my surprise, then, that as I was driving home at the end of a long day, I discovered that I had a few crumbs of sugar from that morning’s danish on my chin.

My first thought?

Mortification!  Did all my clients see me with this sugared chin and think to say nothing?  What might be running through their minds?  The options ranged widely.

“I guess she had a good breakfast this morning.”

“That’s sort of endearing.”

“That’s sort of disgusting.”

“Should I say something to her?”

“<nothing to do with a danish, as they are thinking about their own stuff and don’t notice>”

After embarrassment came wonderment.  How did those little grains of sugar not get dislodged during the course of talking, eating, and moving I did all day long?  Rather persistent of them, when you think about it.  I’d rather other aspects of my life prided themselves more on persistence than pieces of my breakfast.  And yet, it was a bit funny and ironic when I paused to think about it.

Having digested my momentary embarrassment and amusement, it occurred to me that my faux pas could be some grist for the therapeutic mill.  Maybe my clients will see me as more accessible, more human.  Perhaps they think me silly.  It’s possible they might look down on me.

“How can I trust a therapist who can’t manage to properly eat a danish?” they might think.

Perhaps no one noticed and it was not all that perceptible after all, and this whole incident has more to do with me than with what anyone thought of me.  After all, if I could get a new colleague to agree to a collaboration with me with my chin thusly decorated, I must be doing pretty well for myself, right?

I’m sure every one of us has sugared chin incidents—those little embarrassing, oh-so-human moments of ours.  I wanted to share mine with you in the hopes of taking the sting out of yours, if any remains.  We are all of us human, and quite loveable—sugared chins or no.

“It could be quite a forgiving lesson, to write about this small embarrassment and publish it on my blog,” I thought.  And so I have.