My Most Embarassing Moment

I first met Neil deGrasse Tyson in 2003, not long after 9/11. New York was rebuilding but that was all. The area where the Twin Towers stood was a hole in the ground with rubble in it. I, on the other hand, was an up and coming astrophysicist, given an opportunity to study astrophysics under another astrophysicist at the American Museum of Nature and History.

Sounds good anyway. What I actually was was an untraditional student studying physics from a podunk college in West Virginia—and a long way from home without any money. I had no money, no friends… I was absolutely miserable. My boyfriend—who I had just started seeing—lived in WV and I was all alone in the largest city in the United States.

Now some of you might think this would be fun. In fact, if I hadn’t been as reclusive and as much of an introvert as I was, it might have been fun. There are lots of things you can do in New York when you’re broke, but I was terrified to go to most of them alone.

Anyway, Neil deGrasse Tyson is the head of the Astrophysics department at the Fiske Planetarium in AMNH so every week on Friday, he would get together with all the students in the program and we would drink a few glasses of wine and have some cheese and crackers in the lobby of the department like civilized people.

Now realize something. Besides Neil, I’m the oldest at this little shindig, but, sure, I’ve had a little experience with wine and cheese. I had a friend at that time who would hang out and we’d drink wine and eat cheese and olives while watching movies. Apparently this was a sophisticated thing to do since she was the most sophisticated person I knew. She’s from Seattle, never had any issues with getting too drunk that I couldn’t handle—I was ready.

So one day, we’re all drinking—I wasn’t drunk, maybe a bit tipsy, that was it, I swear—sitting around in the Department of Astrophysics lobby and Neil brings out a bottle of wine. It’s special, he says, and goes on to tell us that it’s Chateau de St. Michelle or something like that. In other words, he tells us it’s from the same winery that the expensive wine from Brewster’s Millions was from. It’s the only wine he's ever introduced to us and it’s a bit exciting, having someone tell you a story about how they received something as a gift, and now he was going to share it with us.

We hand our glasses to him and he fills them with this very special wine. I remember getting my glass and being excited to sample this wine from this winery that Neil had taken such great care in telling us about.

I went to take a drink and I dropped it.

I dropped the glass—before I got to taste it even—and it spilled all over the cheese and napkins. My stomach dropped through the floor and my mind went blank. The ramifications of what I had just done—spilled not only just wine, but the wine that Neil had decided to bring out and share with us—had slammed into my thoughts. That one moment—the moment after I dropped that glass of wine—had been imprinted in my mind.

That’s all I remember though about the wine. Neil had a little more in the bottle, but there was no way in hell that I was even going to look at him, much less ask for it. I, however, was absolutely mortified and horrified—perhaps, stunned into tears. So much so that I froze—because I freeze in the fight vs flight vs freeze instinct—and the girl across from me helped me get myself back together as we cleaned up the sopping mess.

The girl across from me who had red hair and freckles tried to tell me that it was okay, people make mistakes all the time, and that it was no big deal.

I had managed to drop a glass of the wine that Neil deGrasse Tyson had been saving for a special occasion in front of him and then made more of a fool out of myself by sitting there humiliated and horrified.

What have you done in front of someone you wanted to impress that went completely wrong?

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