Embarrassment/1

There's nothing as embarrassing as embarrassment itself. Being embarrassed can be quite humiliating, your body flooding itself with visual clues of discomfort at the very time when everyone is looking at you with disapproval. Red cheeks and burning ears, sweat gathering at your forehead and armpits, your hands shaking and your voice faltering. Your mouth dry and your palms wet and your bowels clenched tight. Sid knew the feeling well, but that didn't seem to make it easier.

The worst bit was that he couldn't go anywhere. He was stuck there unable to escape from gaping mouths and eyes. Instinct told him to run away and bury his head in the sand. Physics told him he would have to get his head out from between the stair railings first.

Frantically, he tried again to pull himself backwards but nothing had changed. His ears were still in the way, blocking his progress like hooks on a grappling iron. He had the feeling that the blood in his head had bloated it to an enormous size so that not just his ears but his entire skull was too wide for the gap he had previously managed to squeeze it through.

The initial awkwardness of the onlookers had passed and Sid could hear the first waves of laughter break over him. His shoulders sagged with the pain and effort of trying to escape from his wooden prison. Tears appeared in his eyes.

Not everyone was laughing. Some were just arriving on the scene, having heard the commotion, and therefore simply hadn’t seen Sid’s ridiculous predicament yet. Others were busy marshalling more spectators. And one person had been there from the start but stood frozen, her eyebrows tilted in concerned confusion: Jenny.

In a sense it was she who had put Sid in this mess. He had retreated to the stairs to muster the courage to talk to her. He had been choosing his words, pressing his temples against the wooden posts in an effort to massage inspiration into his mind. As his frustration increased so, unconsciously, did the the force between skin and timber. And that’s when she called his name.

“Sid?” The surprise caused an involuntary jerk which pushed him past the critical point. He knew straight away he was stuck. “Um…hi,” he said, without looking up.