Am I Embarrassing?

I'm a teacher and even I get a bit tongue-tied when I see students in the wider world. I let them lead. Some say Hi but most do the head down shuffle. It's ok. It can be awkward.
I'm sure those Year 7s you saw are super young people. Don't give up on them!

It’s normal. One of our family friends taught at our sons school and he told us he had stopped staying hello to him as our son was clearly very embarrassed

Well my family must be the odd ones out. Neither I nor my children at any age would have been so rude as to refuse to walk next to my parents / me. My DGS (18) always acknowledges me if we should meet in the street even if with friends.
A quick hello to neighbours is only good manners .

My car and I were an embarrassment to my granddaughter when she was 15 . I had to keep a blanket in the back so she could hide under it when I picked her up from school then she started getting the bus home ...... she doesn't mind us now that she's 17 working and having to walk home , she likes the car !!

It's daft, isn't it, annodomini that he'd rather go hungry than acknowledge his mother! That's being a teenager though. Life is so much better when you've got out the other side I feel.

Now I can talk to strangers at bus stops, something I'd never have done when I was young and the world is a friendlier place.

Your replies made me smile! Yes, I guess I am embarrassing, though don’t mean to be!

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I'm with you Bluesky, I used to work at a police station. The male officers were a really friendly close knit bunch (occasionally too friendly)!

But, when they were with their wives, they would completely cut you dead. We became completely invisible.

I once overheard one of their wives asking her husband who I was, He glanced over his shoulder and replied "oh I think she works upstairs in one of the offices"

I worked alongside him at the enquiry desk!

Once, when my DSs were young teenagers, I noticed that one of them had left his lunch box on the table, so I ran round to the bus stop to hand it over. On the way I stopped to sniff a lovely rose in a neighbour's garden. And Oh the mockery from those kids in the bus queue! Not just my own, but from all the teenagers in the neighbourhood. Of course, I acted completely unembarrassed and pretended to be unaware of their reaction. Probably my kids were more embarrassed than I was.

I remember my GS in Oz when he was little asking me if I can cook I was only in my 50's but he must have thought I was Methuselah.

Worse when you're a great grannie because that's really really ancient and you shouldn't even be out.

I wonder which is worse?
I can be both!

Hahahaha, Callistemon, we certainly are----and invisible.

Am I Embarrassing?

In answer to your OP, Calendargirl - Yes
We all are!

Our neighbour's daughter used to cast her eyes to the ground and scurry past if she saw me, although most teenage friends of my DC didn't seem like that.
Now she is one of the loveliest, friendliest young women I know. We rarely see her as they moved away but if we do she is always ready with a big hug (pre-flipping-COVID).

It's a phase.

When my son and his friends were in their first year at university, there was a lot of chat from one of them that financial constraints meant he mainly lived on rice and lentils yeah right! although that may have been because of the cost of the liquid content of his diet. I occasionally meet up with one of my old school friends in Brighton, we happened to be having lunch in Pizza Express, out of the corner of my eye I spied "rice and lentils" who was at Sussex Uni, he and his table were ordering food and drink like it was going out of fashion, maybe a birthday celebration before they got back on their meagre diet of gruel. I said to my friend who I was with I've just spied one of my son's mates, but I'm not going to go over there to embarrass him!

Funny to see this topic raised as I was just chatting to my Dil teacher about it recently. She notices some teens 13-15 group can become very shy and not want to engage in chit chat although previously well known to her and had been outgoing personalities. She said after a couple of years when the hormone storm settles they come out of their shell again. I can see my 14 yr old GD in this phase now and seems painfully shy out with immediate family.
I remember feeling the same at that age.

DG ‘took’ us for lunch in her town as we didn’t know the way, she walked 15 feet ahead of us the whole way......she was 14 then and her excuse was that we were slower than her, we would have had to run to have kept up with her!

I think something you said in the first paragraph stands out for me Calendargirl. You know her mum!! Now if I were 12 years old, that would be bad news. You could well be the one to tell my mum, (in a couple of years' time), that I had rolled my skirt up too high, that my friends were loud, that I was with a boy etc. etc. You are best kept at a distance and ignored just in case!
So no, you're not embarrassing as such, but you are in the enemy camp at that age!

Same here. I have 4. Teenage GC at the moment. 18yr old Dg lovely and chatty. Twin boys 14yrs grunt hello, if pushed. 14yr old GD lovely indoors but tries to avoid me outdoors.

I remember being excruciatingly embarrassed by

My breath showing in the frosty air

Needing to go to the toilet

My first bra

The sofa (not what my friends had)

My father's car

The list is endless

On the other hand my daughter found me so embarrassing she told people she was adopted?

I remember shopping with my teenage daughter and her friend. I was complaining to a shop assistant in M&S about their service, when I looked round for the girls they were both hiding behind a rack of clothing. " You are so embarrassing Mother ".

I agree with all the above. I get accused of being embarrassing because I talk too loudly in public apparently.
My sister in law calls it ' the sausage machine'; they go in about 12/13 and come out at some point as a wonderful adult.

Agree,it`s the norm at that age and they do grow up eventually.

Had I been walking with a group of friends I'd have ignored my own mother!

Very normal behaviour for a youngster

My neighbours children (13 & 15) are very polite. I was out weeding the front garden the other day when the boy walked past and said Good Afternoon even before I saw him