I think I may have mentioned before how my life often presents me with great leveling moments. How just when I feel like I am “the shit,” so to speak, that I am invincible or at least super-capable, inanimate objects kick my ass.
Last week I started my new job as a speechwriter. Woo-hoo! Look at me and where my command of the English language and knowledge of the ways of the military and current affairs and world events has landed me! [picture me with fancy jazz hands here]
“Yeah, okay,” my other half tried to tell me, “you are still just goofy.” By my other half I don’t mean my husband, by the way – I mean literally the other, more skeptical, less celebratory side of my personality – is it literally “half” of me? Hell I don’t know. Quit bringing math into this!
So anyway, after four days into my new job I achieved a whole new echelon in stupidity – in the bathroom. As I entered the 3-stall restroom across the hall from my new workspace, I was a little disconcerted. The door to what I had established as "my stall" was shut. So too was the one to the roomy one (aka handicapped stall -but funny thing is, I haven't seen any handicapped access to this part of the building). That door (door #3) is balanced to always be shut, not just when it's occupied, though. As near as I could tell without schooching down, I was pretty sure it was unoccupied. Out of deference to the disabled and because I wasn't feeling claustrophobic on this particular Friday afternoon, I made my move towards stall #1 for to perform a simple #1 (if you must know). Bottom line is, I was feeling carefree and uncomplicated and was all about getting in, out, and back to my desk.
So I ducked into door #1. Some unforeseen apprehension overcame me at that moment, though, and I questioned whether the second stall really was occupied. Peering through the side slit I saw red fabric-- what is wrong with me? Sheesh, why did I do that?
Well, whatever, get over it. Just get in, get out & get back to work.
Okay, okay.
So I did -- I started; I got in, did my thing, reassembled my uniform, and hastily operated the lock with my left hand.
Haste after waste, makes…
The latch pinched the top of my thumb, causing me to bleed quite copiously. I tried to wash up, but ultimately all I could do short of fabricating a tourniquet was to layer and wrap a paper towel around my truncated thumb nubbin.
And that just tipped off a string of minor mishaps for the remainder of the afternoon: I dumped the anti-holes from the hole puncher tray... all over the floor under my chair, I banged my knee on the edge of the file cabinet, I improperly duplexed a speech I tried to print, I spilled water down my front... BUT I didn't -- I DID NOT get one speck of blood on my set of speech cards! Tah-dah. I am not so retarded after all.
Later on after I had some time to collect my thoughts and lick my literal and figurative wounds, I remarked aloud, “I can’t believe I hurt myself in the Head!”
“You hurt your head too!???” my Air Force buddy said from the other side of the cubicle wall.
“Huh? …no the bathroom.”
“Oh yeah, Navy… head, right. That was dumb. I almost thought we were going to have to get you a helmet.”
Recalling other bathroom party mishaps that I have had (forehead bruises post-christmas party puking), I almost had to agree with him. Some days I may secretly act like I should be riding the short bus, I don't believe that have fully devolved to needing to wear a helmet (all the time) just yet.
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