Gmail is great. Everyone loves gmail. So much space! Such a cool interface! And on, and on, and on.

Gmail is in beta testing and access to it is by invitation only. I was able to get a gmail account because I have a Blogger account and they are owned by Google, creators of gmail. Soon after I set up my account, I became aware of what a hot commodity invitations to join gmail were. When I received my first set of six invitations to bestow upon my worthy compatriots, I selfishly used up two of them on myself to get two more user names. That's really what the big deal is all about right now. Since gmail is so new, you can get almost any user name that you want. There is no need to settle for the craptastic and numerologically bloated user names (michelle0920747328inLA) you are forced to accept with Yahoo or Hotmail.

That left me with four invites and no one to give them to. My friends already had a gmail account, weren't interested in one or didn't know what the hell I was talking about. (Upon publication of this, I expect to immediately receive at least five emails from friends saying I never asked them. Liars.)

I had seen many people trying to profit from their abundance of gmail invites on sites like gmailswap and craigslist and I figured I could profit as well. I was in dire need of patio furniture that I didn't have to mortgage and didn't look like it belonged on the back porch of an old folk's home. I posted an ad on craigslist in the barter section asking for patio furniture in exchange for gmail invites. I said I was willing to pay for it, but that I wanted a discount. I received two pitiful responses. One lady wanted to know what this gmail thing was that she kept reading about. The other guy said he was too poor to offer me anything but that he really wanted an invite. I ended up giving one to the guy. There is a lesson to be learned here for all of you who know me. The best way to get something from me is to pathetically beg for it in a way that humiliates yourself so that I will give you whatever you want just because I am so embarrassed for you and I want you to stop.

That left me with three invites. I tried to be patriotic and help my country by offering them to soldiers fighting in Iraq with the help of gmail4troops. They never got back to me so I decided to try craigslist one more time. I posted an ad in the free section saying that I would give away my three remaining invites to the people who told me the best embarrassing story about themselves.

Within an hour, I had over a dozen responses. For your reading enjoyment, the winners and the honorable mentions are included below.

First Place
This guy wins because I could hear the Chinese lady's voice in my head as I was reading it.

This was the most embarrassing day of my life. I went to the dry cleaner in the AM, just like every other day. I had a few pairs of pants and a shirt. Except this time, one of my pairs of pants had a little bit of diarrhea on it.

I walked in and there was the usual wait. I saw my friend Jan in there. Well, she is not really my friend but we hang out at the same bar on the weekend. I buy her drinks and try to fuck her. She acts interested, talks to me and gets free drinks all night. (Hey, it works for us.) Point is she's real pretty.

So I get up to front of line and give the little Chinese lady my clothes. First thing she does is go right for the soiled pants. "What this?" She asks herself out loud in Cantonese/English, pointing at the soiled part. She leans over a bit and makes a loud sniffing noise. Not that she put it to her nose but just leaned over enough and sniffed to make the point. "Oh, that poop on there."

Jan was standing behind me. I don't know how her face looked or what her reaction was to this. I can only imagine. I did not dare turn around. I could feel my ears getting hot and my forehead sweating; my body was a statue. I just stood there thinking how could I either lie my way out of this or get out of there very quickly without anyone seeing me.

"They're not mine," I said, very weakly, almost whispering to her. She looked at the tag in the back, checking out the measurements and then looked over the counter at my waist. "You 34 waist." I didn't answer. She gave a knowing smirk. My stomach dropped again, my ears got hotter.

Oh, it gets better! While I was standing there paralyzed, the Chinese lady had reached under the register and had slipped on some latex gloves. To my horror, she picked up my clothes, holding them away from her body and started to walk towards the back. One of her co-workers reached over to take my toxic filth from her, but being a considerate Chinese lady she could not allow him to do that. "Careful, poop on there!"

Chuckles in the store got to the point of laughter. One nice fellow excused himself from the store so as not to laugh directly in my face. (Thank you sir, sincerely.) As she walked my filth into the backroom, she did not disappoint. We could hear the echo, "Careful, poop on there." This of course escalated the chuckles back into laughter.

Second Place
This lucky Latina wins because there is a special place in my heart for drunk stories.

So I'm on a weekend trip with my boyfriend and his family (his mother, grandmother, two sisters, brother-in-law, three-year-old niece) and we all have adjoining suites at a hotel in Vegas. This was the first time I'd spent any significant amount of time with any of them, and I'm not really good with conversing with family, so I was a little nervous and kind of hung out mostly with just my boyfriend the whole weekend.

The last night there, we had a big family dinner, and his grandmother spent the night lecturing me on the values of marriage and religion, so I snuck off to the bar and had a couple shots of tequila to calm my nerves and relax. After dinner, and two glasses of wine, gran and the rest of the family went off to bed and my boyfriend and I wandered around the casino and played some craps. The last thing I remembered was a blur of dice, a cocktail waitress, and some big fat guy hugging my boyfriend.

Next thing I know, I'm looking at the three-year-old who's staring at me and pointing. I had been passed out on the bathroom floor of the mom and grandma's room and the rest of the family was taking turns coming in to have a look at me, laughing and taking snapshots, which later ended up in the family album. I guess after getting hammered at the craps table, I had a lucky streak as the shooter and won a bunch of money. Then, on the way back to the room, I passed out at a slot machine and had to be wheelchaired back to the room by security. Naturally, I was sick the entire drive home. Fun stuff.

Third Place
Like I said, the best way to get something out of me is to make me so embarrassed for you that I can barely look at you. Or, in this case, can hardly bear to finish reading your email.

When I was in the 6th grade living with my mom, who was single and very broke at the time, the entire school year was extremely embarrassing. I had to go on free lunch, my mom tried to cut my hair and I looked like King Tut, but the worst thing was that I only had one pair of jeans that I had to wash every other day. They were some off brand and had a big Texas flag on the butt pocket. By the second semester, the jeans were complete high waters. I mean about four inches above my ankles. I was a new student at school that year and I suppose because of the troubles I had at home I did not speak to any of the kids and tried just not to be noticed. One day, some kid said out loud in front of the whole class "Rusty must have all the same kind of pants." A few kids snickered and then some other girl said, "Or he only has one pair of weird pants." I started crying and ran out of class and out of the school and about five miles to my house. That was the most embarrassing moment for me.

Honorable Mentions
I had my credit card rejected at a work lunch once, but I was drunk so I didn't care. This guy wasn't so lucky.

There was this one time I went out to dinner with my boss and his girlfriend and a bunch of coworkers AND my girlfriend, and I forgot to bring any cash with me, so I offered to take everyone else's cash and pay on my credit card, only my credit card bounced! So I had to give back everyone's cash, and ASK MY BOSS to cover my dinner and my girlfriend's!

This is totally something that would happen to me since I am always talking about people behind their backs.

I had a new roommate. After a week or so of living with him, I was describing him in detail to one of my best friends over the phone. What I didn't realize is that the answering machine was running - I had picked up the phone call after the machine had gotten it.

Later that night, my roommate went through the answering machine messages and heard the first few minutes of my conversation, which was almost entirely a description of him - much of it good, but not all. "Depressed" and "probably an alcoholic" were part of it. Stupid me. I'm still embarrassed.

This was one of the first responses I received, but I couldn't let someone this dumb win.

Several years ago I was crossing a busy street along with three other co-workers, when something caught my feet and I tried to detangle myself from it while looking at the cars trying to turn. I held on to a male co-worker while kicking whatever was on my feet. Little did I know it was my slip. Needless to say, they still laugh at me. Instead of me telling the story at a get together they do it for me.

It may have been embarrassing but at least he was getting laid.

Well, I was out with my girlfriend in Silverlake. We were driving around and it was 1 AM. Well, you know, one thing led to another and we found ourselves in a passionate exchange. We pulled over and looked for a place in a residential neighborhood to, um, fully commit. We finally found a place and had to parallel park into this tight spot. Some five hours later, with windows steamed up, I decided to dispose of the, um, contraception and opened the door. All of a sudden her car alarm went off. You know, the very loud and obnoxious kind that flashes the lights and honks on the horn really loud! So here we are scrambling to get our clothes on from the backseat, the windows are all steamed up so we can see what's going on outside, the car is going off like crazy, AND we are tightly parked in this spot. We see these window lights starting to turn on around us, and we are both butt naked trying to drive the hell out of this place. When we finally found the car keys to turn the stupid alarm off, we slowly, oh so quietly drove the hell out of there!

Poor little gay boy!

One morning I had a big breakfast with pancakes, eggs, bacon, you know, the works. Well, later that day I was in class and the teacher called on me to read a poem aloud. You know how English Lit teachers are; they always want you to stand and read. Anyway, it was my turn to read and the guy that I liked sat about two seats behind me. I hate doing anything in front of the class. So I got nervous and right in the middle of the poem I passed gas really loudly and everybody in the class burst out laughing. Even my English teacher was laughing and not to mention the guy that I liked. I ran out of the classroom in tears because I was sooooooooooooo embarrassed. I want to die every time my friends bring that up.