The Faux Pas

Have you ever experienced any socially awkward situations? My wife says that I can't experience anything but. Here are my top three categories of embarrassing situations:

1. The Misintended attention grabber. This one tops my list, I think by far. It can come in several forms. The first is when someone waves and you wave back only to realize too late that they were waving to someone else. Ouch, that one stings. Even worse for me is when you are in a meeting and someone from outside the room tries to get your attention. Upon engaging some form of contact back with this person you suddenly realize that they were trying to communicate with someone behind you. To make matters worse is when you leave the room to join them only to find out you weren't the person that they were trying to get the attention of. To solve this problem, I simply have the policy to just ignore the person regardless of how frantic they get with the arm waving.

2. The Misunderstood word. This one is so commonplace for me because I am deaf, that it doesn't warrant much attention. Everyone experiences this one from time to time. Like when someone asks if you want a raspberry tart and you say something like, "fart? No I haven't fluffed for at least five minutes." The kicker for me on this one is that it extremely bothers my spouse, who is so embarrassed when this happens to me that she usually falls on the floor writhing in embarrassing agony, which generally causes me a little embarrassment.

3. The Trip and Fall. This one can have so many variations that it warrants mention. It usually entails catching your toe on some edge or bonking your head on something. The situation usually is worsened by the fact that you doing something totally stupid right after you do it to cover up the misstep, which generally draws more attention to yourself. For instance, this last Sunday I had to conduct some pretty important business in front of a religious congregation. As I finished and turned around to head back to my seat I tripped over a small chair that was placed strategically in the wrong place for an upcoming children's program. Well, immediately upon tripping I start doing a little soft shoe dance routine as if the whole thing had been choreographed. Not a very smooth thing to do when in front a large body of people who are trying to feel the spirit. I can visualize Jenny now writhing on the floor after reading this.

Has anyone else ever experienced any embarrassing moments?

If at First...

They're Back! The little furry things with black and white stripes, and this time they have followed me to work. My office is out in the trailer trash section of our work complex, where we have set up a several modular units because we grew too large for our building. Now I realize that there is some benefits to dieting.

Well, a family of skunks have moved in under one of the units and they let us know every now and then that they are in the neighborhood by letting off a little squirt here and there. Well, even folks in my trailer trash part of the world had enough of that so they became determined to put an end to these skunk's doctrine of manifest destiny.

Of course they came to me to address the problem because the stories of my adventures with these wily critters have become legendary. Well, more specifically, the tales of my wife's release program have kept the crowds going at the water cooler. So obviously they demanded that my wife and I should team up to get rid of the skunks. I flatly refused. Not because I didn't think that I couldn't catch the little guys, on the contrary, I knew that I could, which was the problem. The difficulty being, as President Bush found out, is the exit strategy. I knew all about the shock and awe with the guns a blazing, but my removal strategies, though I think are quite efficient, have been criticized by the leftist media (my wife's blog).

So, I left our grounds crew supervisor on his own on this one, though, I did give him a lot of advise of actually how to proceed in the operation, of which he ignored most of. This was something that we all would soon regret.

First of all, he bought a trap that could have caught a bear. Oh boy, wouldn't that have been fun if we showed up one morning with a bear in our trap. I mean, a skunk could perform a highwire circus act in there, being able to wave his bushy little tail anywhere he darned well pleased. Next, he placed the trap down a long narrow corridor between buildings with only one way in and one way out. I guess he thought that it would be wise to corner these guys down a long dark alley. Obviously, he hadn't done his homework on war strategy. This may work with destroying tanks in urban warfare, but it only helps a skunk's howitzer when it only needs to aim it's barrel in one direction (effective use of foreshadowing and figurative language, my high school English teacher would be proud of me).

Thinking that this may cause some sort of problem for himself (but I think, not really realizing what this problem could be) he tied a rope onto the trap, leaving the untied end out in the open, out of the alley. Could he have been thinking, "hey, instead of walking up to this trap where I can be sprayed, I will pull the trap to me bouncing it over hard ground, with every tug bringing the trap ever so much closer to myself." Get the visual.

There's not much left to the story. The skunk was caught and the detonation occurred right under my window. Needless to say, we have not seen the grounds guy since then.

I guess this supports the change that I have made to an old adage, "if at first you don't succeed...DON'T BECOME A SKUNK TRAPPER!!!!

And BINGO Was His NAME-O

Once a year my work puts on an employee appreciation luncheon. It is an opportunity for our senior leadership to thank us for all of the hard work that we have shown in the last year, yada, yada, yada. You get the picture. Well, to liven everything up, a few years ago, I suggested that we play some BINGO. I was joking, but they took me seriously because they view me as mister fun and excitement. What can I say, I work with a bunch of engineers. They hired me on the spot and now year after year it is my job assigment to be the annual BINGO caller.


So tomorrow, I am hosting the seventh annual BINGO event. It has actually been kind of fun and I have added my own twists to it. Its kind of been a combination of 'deal or no deal', 'let's make a deal', 'the price is right', and 'the Apprentice' or was that 'the Bachelor'. Whatever ever it is, it is the one with the married guy acting single with the wacky hairdo. There is nothing like being able to fire your boss, even if it is pretend.



It is amazing to see that there is actually something that gets people more worked up into a frenzy than a 4:00 a.m. after Christmas sale at Walmart. All you need is a little gambling with free money. I usually get a pocket full of $1 bills donated to me that I use to try and buy some nice prizes back from the winners. It's amazing how someone will give up a $100 gift for 10-$1 bills.

Then I remember how these are the same people who voted in our last election and I get really depressed.

Hobo Update

Yes we are well into Hobo spider season again. This year we have moved slightly from the "dad would you squash this one...and that one... and oh, that one for me" strategy. Oh, there is still plenty of that that goes on, but this year we have also have made a small investment (into the six figures) on sticky traps. We have them laid out everywhere. It is like we have actually mined our own house. We ourselves are in constant danger of trapping our selves, and these things really do stick. I always fear that somehow, I will get one stuck to the side of my face with at least a dozen or so spiders stuck there with me. You know, they don't die right away when they get caught on these things. You can watch them do push ups for many days after they get caught. So the last thing that I would want would be to have a full aerobics class going on next to my nostrils as they try to get a piece of me in a counter attack.

We usually place these traps in strategic locations where we know they like to roam, kind of the 'hobo highways' for a lack of a better term. Regardless of how many we catch they love to follow certain paths. They just keep piling up on top of each other on these traps. There is a series of traps at the bottom of our door in the laundry room. Every day I count how many we are getting on the trap. Until yesterday. I went down to get a fresh spider count and the traps were gone.

I guess that we need to replace the traps when we reach 45 on them, otherwise, they can walk off on their own with the trap.