Mayor Sam Adams' Embarrassing High School Memories

Mayor Sam Adams joked he would have two fewer staff members this morning after the "embarrassing" scene that unfolded last night.

Adams said members of his staff assembled high school pictures of him for his appearance on Mortified: Live! – an event at which community members share embarrassing tidbits from their past. This edition of Mortified featured Adams and six other speakers. It was part of this year's Wordstock, which wraps up Sunday, Oct. 10. The multimedia presentations include journal entries, short films, and vintage pictures.

Mortified founder Dave Nadleberg helped Adams out with his portion, and the mayor fielded questions from Nadleberg as they sat at center stage.

So what is Adams's most embarrassing moment? The mayor discussed everything from a “projectile romance” (which ended abruptly with that evening's dinner all over his date for a dance) to a surfing club he started at South Eugene High School without a surfboard, surf lessons or a beach (it was a trick to get $200 and a school mailbox).

Adams' school pictures made him cringe, as the mayor poked fun at his hair, his squinting, “light-sensitive eyes,” and his “Shaun Cassidy” look.

If one serious theme dominated Adams's presentation at the Bagdad Theater, it was the difficulty of being in the closet as both a gay man and a low-income student. Nadleberg asked, “So, you were afraid of being outed as an underprivileged kid?”

“That's one of the things I was afraid of being outed as,” Adams said. “Yes.”

Adams was not the only one to poke fun at himself. Speaker Scott Kravitz re-examined his five-year-old fear of death, which snowballed after the passing of his pet poodle Gucci, a book report on “The Exorcist” and a hilariously, disturbing horror movie that only a pre-teen videographer could imagine. Another speaker, Sarah Hoopes, revealed former dreams of becoming an erotic novelist and how she picked a scrawny, Bob Dylan-type kid with a Boy Scout belt for subject matter.

Still, some things were off limits, for Adams anyway. When Nadleberg's conversation with Adams veered into a string of high school romances, Nadleberg asked, “Did you, uh…?”

“Don't go there,” Adams said. “Don't go there!”