In one of the oldest Hindu scriptures, a boy named Satyakama wants to study with a teacher. The first thing a teacher asks is a boy's family, meaning his father's line, since by tradition only a boy of known lineage could be taken on. So Satyakama asks his mother. She can't tell him: she had him while moving about as a servant, and doesn't know which family his father came from. She tells him to introduce himself as her son. He goes to the teacher and repeats her answer exactly, servant and all. The teacher says only a Brahmin, of the priestly class, could have spoken so plainly, and takes him on: "You have not swerved from the truth." Whether he means the boy must be a Brahmin by birth or that honesty makes him one, the text doesn't settle, but either way, saying the awkward thing straight got him in without a family to name. If something awkward about you comes up today, like why you were late or what you forgot, it's easy to soften it in the telling. Tell it the way it happened, with the embarrassing part left in.