Today’s drive to your eight- hour pain therapy session should be without note… at least there wasn’t anything that I could see that might disrupt the drive. Roads are dry, temps are nice, traffic is light, and rocks are all nestled safely in their holes in the dirt… not in the road. There’s just nothing in the way today.
So… random story time. We’ll go with… EMBARRASSING MOMENTS today!
Some friends of mine had invited me to a dedication ceremony for a new temple that had just been built. Now, I’m not a particularly religious man (unless beer, cigars, dirty jokes, gambling, and cursing can be made into some sort of religion, maybe?), but these are good friends, and I’m always open to experiencing new things.
Before the ceremony began in the packed house of worship, I carefully turned my cell phone ringer to “off.” Because, of course, that would really suck for that thing to go off in the middle of church, right? Yep… I turned the ringer off. OFF. The phone should have no ability to make ANY sound, at all.
The ceremony commenced… at one point, though, one of the many men of the cloth on the platform was engaged in a rather long prayer. The congregation— numbering in the thousands— was on bended knee, but quiet as a mouse. Until…. Somebody’s cell phone starting ringing! WOW! I remained on my knees, eyes tightly closed… feeling bad for the poor chump who forgot to turn his ringer off.
But, my chump- compassion soon evaporated, because this jackass, whoever he was, wasn’t DOING anything about it… the phone kept ringing… and ringing… and ringing…. and ringing. What the hell…. (sorry, I mean ‘heck’)? In the ambient silence of the reverent congregation, it was as loud as a dump truck driving through an ear canal.
And yet, the ringing continued… on and on and on and on…. Journey- style on and on. You know the lyrics: “When a cell phone never ends, it goes on and on and on and ooOOnnnn…” Eventually, the man who was praying stopped, probably because God Himself interrupted and said, “Okay, look Frank: We can talk, sure… but what is that infernal sound down there?!? It’s driving me nuts!!!”
Then, somebody put a hand on MY shoulder… and asked, “Hey, brother… would you mind turning that thing off?”
Of course, as you knew, it was MY stupid, irreverent, disobedient, heathen, demon- possessed, bad- uncle, wicked, no- respect- having, Linda Blairish, lousy, going- to- Hell, crappy, needs- an- exorcism, damned phone that was ringing… I had been so convinced that it was NOT my phone, since I HAD turned the ringer off, that I simply welled up with smugness over my careful preparation, rather than entertaining the wacky notion that my phone might be a tool of Satan himself.
I left the temple, and have never been back. I’m sure that I have been forgiven, buuuuuut… I still have a suspicion that my picture is in their foyer, Post- Office- picture style, with a warning about being a disrupter of reverence. Plus, I still haven’t had the phone exorcised yet. I can’t, really, since priests totally avoid me.
Oh, but I’ve embarrassed myself more than a few times. There was the time a few years ago, when I got an email from some corporate manager who had requested a most ridiculous thing from me… even requesting the thing made the requester look like an IDIOT. It was laughable.
I forwarded the message to my supervisor, who would be able to respectfully act as ambassador between bottom- feeder- me, and this higher echelon moron manager. However, when I forwarded this email to my supervisor, who I was fairly comfortable with, I included the note, “Hey, Mike: Look at what this idiot bimbo wants! Doesn’t she get how it works… or is she just too concerned with getting her makeup right, and her hair perfect to spend a moment THINKING about this stuff?!? Please help rescue me from this complete idiocracy!”
My note was tongue- in- cheek, more, “inside joke” and fun, and not so much actual hostility and derogatory chop- down. Buuuuuuut… when the email was sent, I selected, “reply all,” instead of JUST sending it to Mike. Of course I did. So, instead of sending it to ONE intended recipient, I sent it to everybody— including the idiot bimbo— and, well, not everybody agreed that the email was so fun and light- hearted. Wow. Just wow. To this very day, I have a slow- motion video- memory, of watching my index finger going towards the “enter” button, just as my brain processed the information that said, “Hey! You replied to all… that’s a lot of people, including the one you are talking smack about… better not press that ‘send’ button!” Slow motion index finger beat slow brain, unfortunately… and that email went out.
Okay, one more: There was this time that I was writing a daily column for a well- received news site. Each day, I would discuss road conditions, but if there were no road conditions of note, I might discuss other things… and one day, geez… I threw all dignity to the wind, and wrote about a couple of really stupid things I’ve done… stuff that probably left readers thinking, “Man… is this guy for real? Who DOES things that stupid?” I actually wrote these things down for people to read! Man… THAT was embarrassing. Why would anybody even admit to doing such stupid things?!? Apparently, my embarrassing moments just go on… and on… and on… and oooOonnn!!!
