Tell Us About the Most Mortifying Thing Your Parents Have Ever Done

When you’re a kid and teenager, it often feels like your parents—those annoying, uncool jerks who put their blood, sweat, and tears into raising you and giving you a happy life—have but one singular goal: to embarrass you as much as possible. In this week’s Pissing Contest, we’re talking about the times when our folks most succeeded in mortifying us.

Here are some tales from the staff.

Erin Ryan:

My parents didn’t let me have (or buy) a car after I got my license at age 16, but they would occasionally let me drive my dad’s shitbucket 1992 Ford Escord wagon. My dad, for some dadly reason, had attached a squirrel tail to the antenna. A real squirrel tail.

Even in the redneck small town where I grew up, this caused me to get teased. One day after basketball practice, this boy I liked made fun of the squirrel tail, and so as soon as I got home that night, under the cover of midwinter darkness, I ripped the squirrel tail off of the antenna and threw it in the woods.

The next day when I woke up, I found that my dad had replaced the squirrel tail with a raccoon tail that was duct taped to halfway down the antenna and virtually impossible to remove.

It ruined my life.

Deadspin’s Leslie Horn:

Anna Merlan:

Clover Hope:

The time my mom brought iguana meat on a flight back from Guyana as a carry on and stunk up the cabin. Someone asked to move their seat.

Mine:

As a tween, my biggest source of agony was that I wasn’t allowed to go to the mall or Rollerdrome without a parental chaperone because my mother was convinced that I was going to be abducted by a sex predator. None of my friends had similar restrictions so they’d go to the mall and I’d go meet them WITH my dad, who—bored as hell— would trail about 20 yards behind us or sit a few tables away from us in the food court while we did whatever tweens at malls do.

It was endlessly humiliating, but the fact that no stranger ever expressed concern about a middle aged man essentially stalking a group of young teen girls around the mall for hours on end (because how could they know that he was my dad) probably proved my mom’s point that malls are basically sleaze-populated trash heaps.

But before we get into your tales of embarrassing parental woe, let’s highlight some of the best stories from our last Pissing Contest, Your Craziest, Worst, Most Hilarious Summer Camp Stories.

Here’s a reminder from ideasleepfuriously that raccoons are disgusting scavenger demons with tiny human hands:

I spent three of the best summers of my life working at a little scout camp in Eastern Ontario, just outside of Perth. I have literally dozens of stories from it (I’ve already told two here) but this is my favourite:

We had a HUGE raccoon population around the camp. Big families that would get into gang fights at night. It was well understood that you couldn’t leave a scrap of food out at the campsites, especially not in the tents, because they were just sewn canvas sheets on platforms that weren’t sealed at the bottom.

One night, someone came back from town and brought us a big box of Tim Horton donuts, which the staff devoured before lights out. One girl got one with powdered sugar on it and, not having mirrors, didn’t realize she got a bunch on her face. Hours later, she waked us in bed with a feeling of weight on her chest and a tickle on her chin. Yes, there was a big, fat raccoon on top of her, LICKING THE POWDERED SUGAR OFF HER FACE. She screams, her tentmate jumps up, flicks on the flashlight and starts screaming too. The raccoon hops down and leisurely exits through the side of the tent. We didn’t see her until lunch the next day, presumably because she spent 12 hours or so scrubbing her face.

Poor Betty Slocombe!

Honest to gosh, cross my heart this is true.

The one and only time I went to a stay away summer camp (we were very very poor and I only got to attend because I won a scholarship) it was the next to last day I fell and injured my arm, because I’m a klutz.

The counselors called my family to let them know, well…they attempted to call. The line was disconnected. Being very confused they asked me repeatedly if the number was wrong and then they tried the other emergency number they were given and were told that my parents weren’t available. Much concern at this point, but being an 11 year old and it being the pre-cellphone days I didn’t exactly have a rollodex of family numbers with me for them to try, so they did what they could with my arm and figured it wasn’t a major emergency and I was going home the next day anyway.

Well the next day rolls around and my family….doesn’t come. The pick up time comes and goes and the counselors are getting more than a little worried. They try all of the numbers again with the same results and are freaking out when my father rolls up, a good 4 hours late, when they’re about to call the police. Why was he late, oh because they were busy…moving…and forgot about me.

My family moved while I was at summer camp and forgot about me. The counselors were nearly about to drive me home, or have the police drive me home. To the place that was no longer my home. Because my family moved. In the 4 days I was at camp. And didn’t tell me. FOUR DAYS.

Okay so it’s not that entertaining, it’s just kind of a summer camp horror story, the time your family moves while you’re out of town.

And finally, here’s dumbbelle bringing an all new meaning to “mess hall.”

Bless my soul have I got a story!

Baby-dumbbelle grew up in the South, thus she also grew up in the church. Being a good little Southern Baptist meant attending at least one “real” Christian camp during summer vacations. “Real” Christian camps were run by either semi-fanatical Baptists or Methodists, the former being preferred. For those of you who haven’t had the pleasure of attending Christian camps, they are the exact same thing as regular summer camp….except everything has a religious theme, mornings and/or evenings commence with looooong church services, and girls were ABSOLUTELY NOT ALLOWED to wear bathing suits without t-shirts over them. Naturally, spaghetti straps and “short-shorts” were verboten. Purity was discussed quite a bit.

By the time Baby-dumbbelle had grown up to realize all the religious hoopla was a bunch of bunk, she had developed a healthy respect for her male counterparts. Adolescent-dumbbelle convinced her parents to let her attend a more liberal camp, in that it was a generic “Christian” camp. The rules were lax in comparison to my previous camp experiences. I could were TANKTOPS. It was liberating.

Anyways, Adolescent-But-Convinced-She-Was-Pretty-Much-An-Adult dumbbelle decided that this summer was going to be the summer of her First Kiss. There were some campers that weren’t particularly religious, so they were identified as potential fellow partners-in-sin. Victims identified and plan in place, Adolescent dumbbelle started scouting potential locations for her to lose her lip-virginity.

The mess hall was never locked up, but was empty after dark because all of the kitchen staff lived off site. Here, HERE was to be the place of her first exploration into the world of sex.

A nice, maybe Jewish Junior-Counselor seemed receptive to the idea of canoodling, so notes were passed during evening services and long, hot gazes exchanged for nearly a week before the event was to happen.

The Night of Sin began with the initial meeting inside the darkened, slightly spooky mess hall. Kissing was quickly determined to be AWESOME, and things progressed further than initially planned. Shirts were removed and hands were put down pants. Needless to say, Adolescent-dumbbelle decided then and there that she much preferred sinning to piety, a common theme for the rest of her life.

(Warning: the next part might be a little graphic for some. Reformed Christian girls are FREAKS.)

Well, the options were discussed quietly and heatedly as to the next step to take. A blow job was requested and quickly rejected (too close to sex-sex, you see). Then the offer of cunnilingus was put on the table, with the understanding that the favor would be returned. After a discussion of what exactly that would entail (religious upbringings are notoriously lacking in this arena, but that’s another story for another day), the second offer was heartily accepted. It was quickly determined that Junior-Counselor was decidedly experienced, and Adolescent-Dumbbelle had her very first partner-induced orgasm (Side-note: she had gotten her hands on some unsavory books earlier and discovered the wonder of self-induced orgasms, an activity in which she indulged, well….religiously).

As she prepared to return the favor, these two young sinners heard a noise. Picture, if you will, a fully naked 16-year-old with a mouth full, and a 17-year-old (also fully naked) reclining on one of the lunch tables in the fully dark mess hall at a Christian summer camp, frozen in terror at the possibility of literally being caught with their pants down.

Unfortunately, due to her inexperience and fear, Adolescent-dumbbelle bit down a little bit. As most of us know, biting down in this situation is not always ideal. Apparently, however, it was the exact thing that worked. Junior-Counselor unexpectedly “finished” as he was being bitten, screaming due to what I assume was a mixture of fear and pain. Adolescent-dumbbelle ended up with a throat full of blood and some “unidentifiable liquid” which tasted TERRIBLE. She proceeded to vomit her dinner and all recently swallowed liquids up and out of her nose, as she had kept her mouth shut in an effort to keep from vomiting all over her first-ever-real-life-PENIS.

Shock, fear, queasiness, utter terror, guilt, and a little bit of after-glow combined into one terrible scene. Blood was still flowing as the two scrambled to replace their clothing and flee the scene. Now-Scarred-Adolescent-dumbbelle was crying and furiously trying to whisper an explanation/apology to her partner. Understandably, it was not well received.

As the two sinners exited the scene of the crime, they made eye contact with the creature that had scared them so badly: a possum.

The events were never discussed, though to be quite honest, every time dumbbelle sees a possum, she cringes just a tiny bit.