Ahahaha. Ah, OCD. I am that person who rearranges entire table settings and cannot take it when people move stuff.

Embarrassing moment? Okay. I had a patient at work who was a bilateral lower extremity amputee — she didn't have any legs, okay? I had just gotten there and no one had given me report yet, but she wanted her dinner, so I figured I'd just kip in, give it to her, and then go get report.

So I go in there with the tray and I get the beside table, open it up, set up the dinner, all that. I roll it over to her bed to put it across — and I say, "watch your legs!" because I'm putting it across her lap.

Yeeeeeeaaaaaahhhh. At that precise moment I realized and I was MORTIFIED. I don't embarrass easily, but sweet mother. That was embarrassing.

This story is from about a year ago when my brother, his girlfriend, his girlfriend's brother, and I went to a Taiwanese deli-style cafe for dinner. Some context first: my brother and I are second-generation Chinese American. His girlfriend and her brother are third-generation half Chinese and half Japanese American. My brother and I go to this particular cafe a lot with our folks, but this was the first time we went without them.

Anyway, about halfway through dinner, my brother and I discover that his girlfriend and her brother have never tried oyster omelette — very yummy — so we decide to order one. Just one little problem: we can't remember what it's called in Chinese. The menu doesn't help, since we can't find "oyster omelette" on there and we can't read the Chinese. After some arguing, we order what we think it's called, and our waiter comes back a few minutes later with... oyster vermicelli. Close, but no cigar. After some more arguing and an awkward game of food charades with our waiter, we try again... and find out we apparently asked for fried oyster spring rolls.

We would've tried a third time, but our waiter overheard us deliberating and looked really exasperated by that point, no doubt tired of dealing with a bunch of culturally-deficient youths, so we (probably wisely) chose to lick our wounds and retreat. The whole experience was humiliating and utterly fail-tastic. We agreed never to speak of it to our parents for fear that they'll die of shame.