About six weeks ago I was invited to dinner with a friend at her sister's place. While we were visiting it came up that the sister, the sister's son-in-law, and the sister's ten year old grandson all routinely use an item called the "neti pot". I had not heard of a neti pot before and so made the mistake of inquiring more about it. It was described as a pot used to hold a warm water and salt mixture that then gets poured into one nostril and come out the other!
I thought they were joking. Next thing I knew they were showing them off to us. Yes, they actually traveled with them. I still couldn't get over the concept. I just thought it sounded so funny. My friend kind of agreed and it became a running joke between the two of us. If one of us cleared our throat or had to blow our nose, they other would chime "better get a neti pot!"
Well, fortunately it was coming up to Christmas and I knew exactly what I wanted to get my friend--yes, you guessed it--a neti pot. And in my first moment of weakness in this tale, I actually bought it and gave it to her. Her reaction was priceless. Her family was excited. I still thought the whole thing was amusing. Until later when we were back at her place and she decided we should try the neti pot, recording it as proof for her family. Now that still wouldn't have been too terrible except the experience didn't go as smoothly as it sounded which resulted in a hilarious and truth-be-told quite disgusting video of her. So she insisted I try it too. And with a deadly combination of curiosity and weakness (number 2) I agreed.
My video of course was no better. Unless you're talking entertainment value. It was so horrible it made us laugh until we cried. Deb went off and within an hour she had both on youtube with the privacy function, or so I thought. She sent them off to her sister who sent them to her son-in-law and every one got a big kick out of it. Belly laughs were had by all I heard. Again, I didn't think to much of it. Until...
The next morning we got up and went over to work on the computers (I'm staying with this friend a couple of weeks to work on video projects on her mac). I started on my video editing and she checked her email. Next thing I know, I look over and she's on the youtube site. "I guess I didn't make those videos private" she reports, "there's 18 hits on the your video". I quickly did some math, her sister, the son-in-law, the grandson--that's three, that would mean they would have had to each watch the video 6 times--oh crap. I knew complete strangers had now seen me with a spout jammed up my nose with face contortions even a cartoonist couldn't imagine.
Sure enough, on closer look it was revealed that people from all over the world had watched my video. There were hits in New Zealand, Belgium, Italy, France, Germany and of course the United States. I was at a critical turning point. I could either be completely embarrassed about this fact or I could just accept it and go with it. It's never been easy for me to laugh at myself and I tend to take life a bit too seriously sometimes. Since it was the New Year I opted to take the adventurous route. "Let the video be out there" I said and I tried to convince myself it was going to be all right.
That morning when a friend IM'd me on facebook I thought I'd test the waters, so I shared the link to the video. She said she had tears running down her face. She shared it with her husband who is a colleague of mine at school and his response was "I know what I'm showing at your retirement party". At that point in what I call my third and final moment of weakness in this saga, I plunged full-heartedly into the "laugh and the world laughs with you" route and posted my video on facebook.
I'm still not sure if that was the right decision or not. It's not good to have embarrassing evidence out there as the article linked below will attest. But done is done. And from what I've heard, and from what my friends have reported on my facebook wall, a good laugh has been had by many. I'm happy to report this time I'm laughing with being laughed at.
