Embarrassment
Walking in on Mum and Dad: Adventures in Embarrassment
by Brian King
Humiliation, shame, mortification, ignominy, chagrin or whatever you want to call it can be caused by a painfully wide array of circumstances. It lurks around every corner to catch you unawares. You can find embarrasment everywhere: in failure, in success, in stupidity, in carelessness, in mistakes, in slips of the tongue, in forgetfulness, in distraction and in snoring, farting, over-hasty emails, nudity, injury, accidents and so much more.
It can be extremely funny if you're not the committer of the faux pas but otherwise it can make you want to die. This book looks at embarrassment from both a scientific and psychological point of view and at the same time it recounts a hilarious line-up of Brian King's own and other people's mortifying misadventures.
This one isn't in the book, but to finish on a local note of embarrassment, who else remembers the butcher's shop on a corner in Princes Street, Dunedin with the bright flashing sign "You can't beat Tom's meat"?
