Having a PhD or being a well-known expert in your field doesn’t make you immune to embarrassment. Even the best of us get into awkward situations that make us blush, no matter if we’re rocket scientists by day or brain surgeons by night—we’re all human, after all.

That’s what Twitter user Herne_TheHunter, aka Dean, wanted to show the world by sharing their facepalm-worthy story. Their embarrassing situation inspired other intelligent people to share their own awkward and cringy situations that you’re bound to relate to just like us, dear Pandas. Scroll down, upvote your fave tweets, and share your most embarrassing experiences in the comments.

Bored Panda spoke to Dean about their embarrassing sock incident and went into detail about how best to react to awkward situations. "Did I mention it was a Boba Fett sock? It was a Boba Fett sock…” Read on for the full interview!

Image credits: Herne_TheHunter

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Dean is a 39-year-old doctor with two degrees, is a member of a Royal College, and had a sock up their shirt sleeve all morning. This is so relatable that the thread went viral on Twitter, getting over 113k likes and 7.3k retweets and comments.

“I certainly didn’t expect such a big reaction. Most of my tweets get a handful of likes and I’m frankly grateful for that much of a response. I’m not really sure why this one seemed to resonate with people. I’d guess it was because it gave everyone an opportunity to share their own silly oversights/mistakes,” Dean told us.

“Social media can often involve trying to look cool, or woke, or knowledgeable so maybe it was refreshing to be able to present the other side of things for a change?” they wondered about why the thread became so popular.

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“I’m mainly working from home at the moment as most of my job is as a psychotherapist and we’ve been able to switch to remote working during the COVID-19 situation. As such, it was a little unusual for me to have to actually put full work clothes on and pop into the hospital for a bit,” Dean said.

“Clearly, I was out of practice at getting dressed as when I reached for my coffee later on that morning, I felt a strange, furry sensation around my elbow. I had to undo a couple of shirt buttons to retrieve what turned out to be a stray sock (having double-checked all Teams calls had ended). I didn’t actually mention it to anybody at work directly: we’re socially distanced at the moment so I would have had to actively seek them out, which might have felt a bit weird."

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Dean and everyone else’s stories illustrate that even the mightiest and most accomplished adults who have 200+ IQ and play 5D chess can make blunders. Making mistakes is a part of life, however, it’s also important to know how to react to embarrassing situations.

According to Dean, embarrassment can be tricky to handle. “I immediately thought of a couple of situations that still make me squirm from my past. If it’s something inconsequential, like a sock up your sleeve, then it might be a useful opportunity to remember you’re human and to puncture any pomposity that might have snuck up on you. For more serious or significant situations, I think the best advice I can give would be to talk about it when you feel safe and ready to do so.”

Dean added that he wants to use the opportunity while he has the internet’s attention to do some good in the world and point people towards his friend’s social enterprise that employs survivors of domestic abuse to make flowers out of recycled paper.