We all have embarrassing moments in our lives. Some happen in front of your crush. Some seem to go on forever. And others end with everyone seeing your wiener. My story involves all three.

I was in sixth grade. An absolutely horrible time in my life, but that was about to change. We were graduating that week, and seventh grade was just around the corner. Freedom.

But before that, my family and some family friends were going to go on our first summer trip of the year. Per tradition, we would all pile into multiple SUVs with boats in tow and drive four hours north away from Los Angeles to Bass Lake. I LOVED these trips. I got to hang out with my cousins from San Diego, not do homework, and most important, cheerleaders were going to be there.

One of our family friends had a daughter on the high school cheerleading team, and by the grace of God, she brought five of her cheerleader friends with her on our vacation. This was literally like five of my dreams coming true at once. I knew once they saw me do my famous dolphin dive into the lake, they would all fall in love and I’d be forced to choose but I wouldn’t be able to and we’d all get married after I graduated … middle school.

The excitement was almost too much to handle. Actually, it was too much to handle. I was notorious for being an awful car mate at that time in my life, but this trip was worse than ever. I incorrectly sang the lyrics to every song that came on the radio and had to pee every ten miles. Dads hate that. I don’t know if anyone else noticed this, but dads have camel bladders. I’m positive.

Anyway. That year my uncle Rob drew the short stick when I decided to ride with my cousins in his car. Let me tell you about Uncle Rob: He doesn’t like singing even when the lyrics are correct, he thinks bathroom breaks are a waste of time, and he despises having grapes thrown at the back of his head. How did I find that last one out, you ask?

I was throwing grapes at the back of my uncle’s head from the moment we left Los Angeles. I don’t know what it was about his head, but it was so big, with this perfect target of where hair used to be, and I was a sniper. I’d eat one, then toss one to Uncle Rob for him to eat one. Except he was never looking because he was driving and it would just hit him in that sweet, sweet cranium. I went through about thirty grapes that way until he did one of those adult car-turn-arounds and said, If you throw one more grape up here you’re going to regret it!

I had never seen him so angry. His face was almost as red as the spot on his head where I had continually pelted him with grapes. I sank, and immediately regretted all the grapes I had thrown. I told myself to stop … but then I noticed I was holding the heaviest grape in all the bag. He was in my hand, looking up at me, begging me in a little grape voice to let him fly like his brothers and sisters had. How could I deny him?

I launched the grape and it landed smack dab in the middle of his male pattern baldness, and the second it did, the blinkers went on and the car started to pull over. The cars in the caravan behind us followed suit into a busy gas station.

Everyone stepped out from their cars to stretch or pee (except the dads) and that’s when I saw the cheerleaders. They were stretching and it was the greatest thing ever. They were even better than how I described them in that earlier paragraph. I finally understood true love, and I understood it five times over. Nothing in the world could have ruined that moment for—OH MY GOD, WHY IS UNCLE ROB CHASING ME?!

Yeah, Uncle Rob was now chasing me around the parking lot and people were starting to watch and laugh. The cheerleaders were laughing, so I even started laughing. Uncle Rob was not laughing. But I was a fast kid and he was a big guy so he would never be able to—OH MY GOD, HE CAUGHT ME!!

He swooped me up off the ground and said, “I told you that you’d regret this.” Then he turned me upside down and held me by my ankles. Then somehow, by the grace of the devil, he reverse-pantsed me. I was hanging upside down with everything hanging out. People were hysterical at this point. I locked eyes with my true love, a gaggle of cheerleaders who were all covering their mouths while laughing. I wondered if they were impressed. Probably not. It had been kind of chilly in the car.

Finally, my mom pulled into the lot and was not happy with what she saw. She yelled at him to put me down and I scrambled to pull my shorts up, but by then it was too late. They had seen me at my most vulnerable: fully naked while upside down. For the rest of the trip it was very, very awkward.

I didn’t end up dating any of them that year, or marrying them after I graduated. I did, though, run into them much later as a twenty-year-old. The daughter of the family friend who brought her cheerleading friends on our trip originally was now getting married and I, along with her same group of cheerleader friends, was going to be in attendance.

For the first time in almost a decade, I would be face-to-face with the first girls to ever see my private parts, and not in a good way. Would they even remember? Let me ruin the surprise. They remembered everything.

But this situation is something I’ve learned so much about over time. Basically it’s the famous equation, tragedy + time = comedy. Now obviously some tragedies are just tragic, but others are perfect material for comedy. I’ve been cheated on, had the worst first kiss of all time, and got the most epic pantsing ever in front of my dream wives. But all of those moments have become incredible stories that I tell time and time again. Eventually everything that happens to you will become a memory that makes you you. Just to prove it, when I saw those cheerleaders again, we actually had a huge laugh about the entire situation!

And when I saw them at that wedding, I wasn’t the same kid. I was an adult now. More important, I was an adult fully clothed in a suit and tie. And one of those girls who saw everything years ago just happened to really like adults in suits and ties. Yep, you know where this is going, I went on a date with one of those cheerleaders not too long after that wedding. Was it all five? No. But you know what they say. Five cheerleaders is a fantasy. One cheerleader is still really cool, though.

Thanks, Uncle Rob.