Not long ago I drove down a suburban street with a friend, who struck up a conversation about speed cameras and getting caught driving too fast. “Yes”, I exclaimed, “I haven’t been pulled over and given a ticket for at least 15 years.”

With that I rounded the corner… to be pulled over by a grumpy cop and given a speeding ticket.

Life sometimes seems to work like that. We all have plenty of capacity to look like a complete chump just when we are trying to do the reverse.

Embarrassment can happen by accident but we also serve it upon ourselves. Whichever way, I suspect it lingers far longer and larger for the embarrassed than it ever does for the embarrassee.

At least that’s probably the case for those not given to being thick skinned, or a politician. John Key’s fumbled handshake with Richie McCaw at the Rugby World Cup would have caused JK brief embarrassment simply because it exposed what everyone already knew – John had been thinking about grabbing Richie’s victorious mitt for a while and the premature grasp ahead of the RCW President left his golden moment looking like John wanted a game of scissors, rocks and paper.

But hey, we’ve all been there. My first and worst such moment came in primer two when my bladder didn’t quite hold out in class to the playtime bell. I can still see the entire class gazing at me and my efforts at floor irrigation. It seemed like all my cultivations at being cool and intelligent had tumbled to the floor with my discharge.

But here’s the point. I bet that that class has long forgotten my little accident while I’ve played my personal mind video over and over again ever since.

I guess that’s why politicians need to get over their embarrassments double quick. After all, my primer two effort wasn’t broadcast live into millions of households and bars around the world. In fact in John’s case, there were probably votes in his grasping gaff.

John Key gets stuck in the awkward three-way handshake