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The Webster’s Dictionary definition of shame:
1 : a painful emotion caused by consciousness of guilt, shortcoming, or impropriety
2 : a condition of humiliating disgrace or disrepute : IGNOMINY .

As it happens, I’m not blogging on being arrested, a shame to which I have not (yet) been subjected.  But at some point yesterday I realized that I was suffering little arrows of shame repeatedly.  The occasion that brought this bitterly to mind?  I took my children to a museum and then we wandered into a restaurant that turned out to be very, very nice (the kind where a waitress seems to have nothing to do but stand by your table, refill your glass, and smile in a long-suffering type of way).  I won’t go into what inspired shame.  It makes me turn pink and my blood pressure goes up.

But I started thinking about it.  My experience of shame has changed its focus over the years, but it doesn’t seem to go away.  Here’s a few things that used to shame me that don’t even make me blink anymore:

1) buying a box of tampons when a very cute teenage boy is bagging groceries (though I might not enjoy buying Depends, if those lie in my future)
2) having the bottom of my bikini fall off in the pool (I don’t wear bikinis, so this is not a problem)
3) buying romances in front of intellectuals (I’m a crusader now)
4) breaking into uncontrollable giggles during sex (no need to elaborate)
5) having my bra straps show (they’re designed to show, besides no one cares)

The cruel thing is that although I’m tougher and older and smarter...I still find myself ashamed.  A lot.  Some of it is self-inflicted.  For example, like most working moms, I tend to shop frantically, ahead of time, for holidays if I happen to find myself alone and in a cash-accepting environment.  So a couple of weeks ago I madly bought a lot of chocolate eggs, rabbits and the like.  Along with 12 marshmellow easter eggs covered with chocolate.  Oh no, I thought, looking at them. I can’t buy this: it’s too many and the children will get sick.  But then the brilliant thought occurred to me that I could eat a few myself (they’re my favorite!), thus throwing myself into the path of junk food to save my children.

Fine.

Every day around 4 I got into the habit of sneaking into my own closet, grabbing a marshmellow egg and sneaking back out again. 

Anyone want to guess how many eggs are left?

Oh the SHAME!

How about the rest of you?  What no longer shames you...and what’s shamed you most recently?