When Black Friday Comes

It is Friday at last and Boob Week finally draws itself to a close. While I can't say I've really enjoyed sharing these blunders with you, it has certainly been enlightening to me to see a whole bunch of them lined up like this. I would urge anyone who is reading this to keep in mind that these things, especially the epithet-based events, embarrass me as much as they should and that I have learned a lot from my being a huge, bumbling jackass.

I don't for a minute think I won't be doing more of these moronic things, but one can hope that I just don't repeat them. I hope that I will be going in for completely new moronic things. It's the optimist in me, I guess.

I'd also like to thank all those I've offended along the way. You've been real sports. And so, without further ado, here is my final boob moment for the week of April 26, 2004.

Out of the Frying Pan and Into the Fire
When I used to work at the airplane factory a few years ago I had to travel a lot. One time we left Toronto extremely early, travelled to Atlanta, GA for meetings and coordination and to pick up our aircraft and crew. We then flew out to St. Augustine, FL for more meetings and more coordination with yet more crew and another aircraft (we wanted to do an air-to-air shoot over water). It was an exhausting day in an exhausting week and me and my brain were getting quite tired.

St. Augustine, however, is a charming little place and at about 9:00 at night we had a bit of a chance to drive through it looking for a place to eat. I was with my photographer and videographer, a rep from our client's airline, and two flight attendants, whom I had just met that day. They were all very nice. We decided to go to a restaurant called "The Gypsy [Something or Other]" which was a family-run business. We sat down and ordered and as we were waiting it was now time to make light getting-to-know-you informal conversation. We were talking about something or other and I thought it was time to chime in with an anecdote of my own.

While I cannot remember what story I was telling, I do remember how it ended. It was a story of some small inconvenience I had encountered. At the conclusion of my little tale I meant to say "but I got gyped" (even though I haven't used that phrase since I was a little kid and found out it was a slur).

I don't know if this has happened to you or not, but I heard the sentence in my head a split second before I was going to say it and realized it was the absolute wrong thing to say. I tried to salvage it at the last moment and the process went a little something like this:

"...but I got g [what are you saying? For once there may be actual Gypsies around who you would insult. Abort! Abort!] gyy [shit! You've already started with a 'g' sound. You've got to come up with something better that still starts with that sound! C'mon! Time's running out!] ewed [WHAT?!! "Jewed"?!? I said better you idiot! What in god's name are you thinking?!! How is that better?]

I sat stunned for a moment and marvelled crazily at my own words. It was like I suddenly had Tourette's Syndrome and I couldn't trust myself not to shout out "CUNT nigger ballSACK!" at any moment. My client blinked a couple of times at me and then looked away. I stared helplessly at the photographer as my not particularly interesting story petered out shamefully, and he jumped in and politely changed the subject.

At that point I seriously considered divorcing my brain. I kept praying that none of the good people at the table were Jewish, although that hardly matters. "They think I'm some huge, horrible anti-semite" was all I could think. I was particularly obsessed with the fact that I drew out the word, too. "Jeeeeeeewwwwwwed." I'm not convinced I didn't have a drawl when I said it, either.

I wanted to sit quietly with my head on the table from then on. If anyone deserved a time-out it was me. But maybe no-one took any real notice. Or, better yet, maybe they were all a bunch of huge, horrible, anti-semites themselves! Yeah! Maybe!

Soon the food came and it was delicious. I forgot my little faux pas as the yummy home cooking filled my belly with love. They may be thievin' lil bastards, but them gyps sure can cook, I tell ya whut!

Thursday's Child

Welcome once again to Boob Week, the week where I lay bare my soul and share with the world (okay, four people) my most embarrassing moments. Today we've got a two-fer special, as I had two little embarrassments that didn't seem big enough for their own days.

The Smell of Victory
A few years ago we were having trouble with cats using our deck as a restroom. There is nothing more unpleasant than going to sit out in your backyard to relax and having to smell the effluvia of the neighbourhood feline population, so we all did what we could to discourage this behaviour.

My one roommate tried everything she could think of: mothballs, bleach, vinegar, black pepper. And all three of us did our part by running over to the glass doors and banging on them like crazy ladies any time we saw a cat on our deck. However, Parkdale cats are a hardy bunch and nothing seemed to work. It was driving us crazy.

One day I got an idea to mix a bunch of our remedies together to see if that would work. The whole time I mixed the bleach, vinegar, black pepper etc. together I cackled maniacally to myself. "Stupid cats! We'll see who has the last laugh! You see these? Opposable thumbs, assholes! Prepare to meet your match!" I had finished putting my concoction together and wanted to see if it was potent enough. I put my head in the bucket and took a deep breath.

About ten minutes later, after my eyes and nose stopped burning and my coughing finally petered out it occurred to me that perhaps I wasn't the intellectual match for a bunch of shitting cats as I thought I was.

(And no, my mixture did not deter the little jerks one little bit.)

Love Conquers All
We've all been there. The beginning of a relationship is a special time, filled with trepidation, nervous excitment, and plenty of booze. One puts one's best foot forward and tries to project the best image of oneself possible (that is until you are sure you've hooked the other person, and then you can let them see the real you).

Accordingly, a lot of people tend to have a grace period when they are with their new special someone that encompasses the need to conceal bodily functions or noises. Even though everyone knows we all do these little things, one puts forth a special effort in the name of Love. It was perhaps not the smartest thing for me to do, then, to invite my new boyfriend during this still-delicate time to our annual May 2-4 weekend.

May 2-4 weekend (aka Victoria Day weekend) is the first kind of good weather weekend in Canada, and we greet it every year with as much joy, celebration and ceremony as ancient peoples must have greeted their alien overlords when they came to build their pyramids for them. May 2-4 is that special time of year that includes barbecues, firepits, blindingly white skin, chili, board games, beer and old friends. In short, it's a powderkeg waiting to go off.

My roommate's boyfriend and I have a special relationship, one of mock animosity. Indeed, we all like to try to insult each other when we can and we all enjoy a good burn at each other's expense. It does tend toward the juvenile, however, and we've known each other long enough that bodily functions have become part of the mix (unfortunately).

We had been at the cottage for a couple of days already and it had gone well. We all had a lot of fun and the bf fit in with the gang perfectly. He had even picked up on the insult thing and had gotten in a few good ones of his own. I was starting to feel more comfortable. A bit too comfortable, in fact. The roommate's boyfriend had started to rib me again and I had this witty comback for him: "Oh yeah? You know what I think of that? *Baaaaaarrrruuuuuuuuuppptt!!*

After the enormous belch died away and the windows finished rattling there was a deathly moment of silence where I had realized the enormity of the thing I had done. Never before have I broken that particular taboo in a relationship so spectacularly. I buried my face in my hands and proceeded to turn the colour of a well-done lobster as my friends literally fell off their chairs laughing at me. After about a half an hour the laughter died away and I found that I could actually look my boyfriend in the face again.

It's been one full year now and he has still hung around and put up with a lot worse from me and my friends. But now that he's one of the gang, I shudder to think what will happen this May 2-4.

And Wednesday, Too

Boob Week continues...

Gimme a hand?
I can't tell you how many movies and television shows I've seen where a character wakes up from a nightmare sitting bolt upright in bed screaming. I always thought, "oh, give me a break! Overact much?" Because, thankfully for me, I don't suffer from this kind of thing. I rarely have bad dreams and when I do it's mostly just a bad or sad feeling that makes me wake myself up to stop it. I roll over, maybe think about the dream for a bit, then go back to sleep. Not since I was a kid have I actually made any kind of yelling sound and I don't think I've ever been so scared that I've moved to get out of the bed.

Oh, yeah. Except this one time.

It was years and years ago and I had been working in the Advertising industry. I've talked before about how horrible I found it, and at the time I was working crazy long hours for people I couldn't stand and getting paid crap. I was exhausted physically and emotionally and really looking forward to a nice long weekend of rest and relaxation with my friends. We had rented a couple of cabins in the Muskoka area (cottage country as it's called) for me and 7 of my closest friends. I was staying in one cabin with my friends Donna and Gary and Cara. Donna and I shared a room with two single beds in it and Gary and Cara had the other bedroom right beside us (the walls were paper thin, man).

Anyway, we had been up there one full day already. A day filled with barbecueing, sitting on the porch in the sun listening to music, chatting, laughter and of course: sweet, sweet beer. I went to bed fairly early (probably around 2:00) because as I said I was still exhausted. I think Donna followed me soon after, but I was already asleep by the time she went to bed. I began to dream, I can't really remember how it started out, but slowly it turned itself into a not so nice dream. Goofy, yes, nice, no.

So in my dream there was this hand, see. It was a disembodied hand (a thing I must point out I have never found anything but laughably silly in movies of same) and it was out for blood. Specifically, mine and my friend Donna's blood. It wanted to kill us, to strangle the life out of us and then, I don't know, maybe retire to a nice island somewhere? Who knows? But in any case I watched in my dream where this hand had killed others and was now after me. It was now in our bedroom. It was now crawling up the sheets to get me. It was now around my throat. I had had about enough of this nonsense, so I began to wake myself up.

The only really strange thing was that when I did, there was actually a dead hand clutching my throat.

"HOLY JESUS FUCK! WE'VE GOT TO GET OUT OF HERE! WE'VE GOT TO GET OUT OF HERE, IT'S GOING TO KILL US! IT'S GOING TO GET US! DONNA, GET UP, WE'VE GOT TO GET*crash, thump, bang!!* Ow."

In my haste to get myself the fuck out of my deathbed, my feet got tangled in the sheets and I had fallen on the floor between our beds, making me fall directly onto my knees and crack my head on Donna's bed, which helpfully woke me right up. It was pitch black and I was still reasonably sure there was a dead hand in my bed, but through a herculean effort I made myself stand up calmly and walk over to find the light switch. I mean, there's no point in helping out a disembodied hand that's trying to kill you. You should really make the little fucker work for it.

Since my outburst Donna was saying "what is it? Alanis, what's wrong? Are you okay?" Still shaking like a paintmixer, I found the light switch and turned it on. I slowly turned around, not wanting to tell Donna what had just dawned on me. Her 29-year-old adult, responsible friend had just screamed bloody murder and scared the bejeezus out of her for no good reason. It was all just a scawy dweam!

As I explained the dream to Donna I realized what must have happened. I had fallen asleep on my stomach with my arm underneath me and my hand touching my face. The full weight of my body naturally made my arm and hand fall asleep and my delightful subconscious whipped up a lovely little tale to try and get me to roll over. It's all kind of funny, really. It would have been one thing if I had been at home, alone in my apartment I could have gotten over it sooner, but nooooo, I had to go and have the night terrors in front of everybody in the world like a fool. Man, did I feel stupid.

Except, hey, the walls are paper thin here. How come Gary and Cara haven't even moved? Hmph! Some friends they are! They're going to be the last people I help when the real disembodied hand comes for us all!

Anyway, Donna and I had a good laugh about it, me feeling like a moron, her trying to make me feel better by telling me a story about a friend's brother who had had eye surgery once, so he had to have patches over both his eyes. His hands feel asleep on top of him and he shouted out "who's there!? Who is it?!" until his sister had to come in the room and say, "it's you, dumbass." I did feel a little better after that.

Still, knowing intellectually what must have happened did not make me feel any easier when I had to get back into the bed. After double-checking to make sure there was indeed no severed hand in the bed, I was wide awake for hours thinking about how powerful the mind is and how it can make you believe anything, even something as stupid as a hand that, having come apart from the rest of the body, still has the power of independent movement and an insatiable desire to kill people. I mean, is that what my hands are always thinking? "Oh, man, once I lose this load of a human being and I'm on my own, I am so going on a killing spree! Muwahahahaha!" That in itself is disturbing.

After falling asleep on the couch, the next day all of my friends made proper fun of me and my rugburned knees (yeah, yeah, I know all the jokes). I answered it all with as much jocularity as I could, and we all got a lot of fun out of it. In time, my wounds healed and I could actually fall asleep on my stomach again. Reason had returned to her throne and all was right with the world. For a little while, anyway.

Tuesday's Grey

So, here it is another day in my weekly marathon of actually updating the old blog. I'm continuing with my theme of Boob week, but frankly I'm having a bit of a problem deciding what to write about. It's not that I have a dirth of moronic events that I could share with the world, me-oh-my no! it's just that a lot of them are just a little too embarrassing. I may have to borrow a couple of party-approved boob stories from friends and/or neighbours. We'll see.

At any rate, this is my latest blunder:

I am. An idiot. I used to be one of those people who liked to think I was better than other people simply because of my nationality. I've heard people like that called patriotic, but I have since realized that folks like that are merely obnoxious jerks.

Canada is a young country, comparatively, and as such we're still searching for an identity. For a long time we were too shy to think we even deserved one and spent a good deal of time deprecating ourselves, but in the last decade or two we've become defiant and started to cast about for something like patriotism of our very own. Unfortunately all we've come up with is "we're not American". (And we like to drink beer and play hockey.)

As little as four years ago I bought into this silliness myself. I was an ever-so-proud Canadian(tm) and I didn't care who knew it, but it was somewhere in Mexico when I realized that perhaps being a cocky, loud, anti-American Canadian isn't really much to be proud of. So there I was, innocently dancing on a bar when the nice young man behind me in the bunny-hop line leaned over and asked me if I was American. "Me?! American?! Certainly NOT! I am CANADIAN! Pfft! American! As if!!" and while my words might not seem like they were the epitome of insulting, my tone and body language certainly were. He may as well have asked me if I was into beating sickly orphan children with the toys of privileged kids for all the vehement rejection in my voice.

It was in the silent few seconds after my outburst that I realized something painfully obvious. "You're American, aren't you?" The bright young lad chirped, "I'm from Iowa!" and continued dancing happily along the bartop.

And even though he didn't seem to mind being insulted by me (I'm guessing the tequila had something to do with it), it was then I realized that perhaps my particular brand of patriotism could use some scrutiny. I have since revised my views, and while I'm still proud to be Canadian I try not to put down other countries (especially America), either. So thank you, Iowa Boy, thank you for letting me be a jackass to you. You might be pleased to know that I actually learned something from it.

(Also, I hope the violent retching and pounding headache from the tequila the next day wasn't as harsh on you as it was on me. Ai chihuahua, the Mexican sun on a poor, hungover person!)

Monday, Monday!

Well, here I am sitting at my desk Monday morning with my tea, logging on to the internet with an intent to waste a few hours looking busy. Who says unemployment is that different from fulltime work?

And here I am trying to decide what exactly my theme is going to be this week. Optimally, it should be something entertaining... Let's see, what is entertaining? Hmmm... well, if I take popular television as a model then I'd have to surmise that something reality-based is the way to go... And something that shows me in the poorest light possible, too...

EUREKA! By Jove, I think I've got it! Public Humiliation! That's it! Ladies and gentlemen...

WELCOME TO BOOB WEEK!

(That's boob in the sense of "idiot", not "breasts". I apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused.) Well, now that we've got a name for my pain, let's get straight to the moronity!

Interview with a new hire Back when I was 25 I got my very first office job. It was in a huge, stifling, corporate Insurance brokerage and I was ecstatic. It was the first job where I didn't have to wear a hairnet or have to suggest accessories to someone at the end of a business transaction. In my naivete I believed that I was now in a professional world where there was protocol and levels of authority and a certain standard of behaviour that was reserved for executives and executives alone. (Now, of course, I know that that is a giant load of horse crap, but back then I was young, so young.)

Plus, I had just been put through the paces of actually getting a job, which means that I was well versed in the "I am a Viking Warrior come to conquer the tasks of collating and filing, ask of me what you will!" back-and-forth that is the excruciating process of being interviewed. I knew all of the things that were meant for me to answer. "I don't think of them as problems, only as challenges" and "well, I guess I'd have to say that I'm just too darn much of a perfectionist!" and of course, "I see myself following in your footsteps, sir and/or madam" *smile shyly*.

I was only at the office a few months when I met The President. I had of course heard tell of The President in song and story, even caught sight of him once or twice, but I had not yet met the legendary man himself. It was fitting, then, that I should finally meet up with him on my birthday. Earlier in the day I had had my first boring office gathering where I had been given awful too-sugary iced-to-within-an-inch-of-its-life cake by mostly indifferent coworkers. As I waited for the elevators and awkwardly held a giant piece of the awful cake ("take it home... for later!"), The President floated out of his suite of offices and came to rest beside me. It seemed I had stayed as late as The President. That's always a good thing, right? I was immediately alert and professional, yet very nervous. I did not want to blow my first executive meeting, even if I was holding overly-iced baked goods. I smiled and said nothing.

He smiled back. The elevator was taking forever so I guess he decided to strike up a conversation. He introduced himself. I said that I of course knew who he was (stupid thing to say, moron, too eager! You want to be positive, not obsequious). He was silent for a bit. Then he asked me how long I had been at the company, what department I worked in, did I like it there, etc. and I answered it all very professionally, positively and confidently. After an uncertain start I was totally nailing this interview. The elevator took another millenium to arrive. He smiled again and then said, "and you are...?" I searched my brain... what did he want from me? What answer could he possibly be looking for? I had already given him all the right answers! I told him I liked it here! I had totally forgotten that I hadn't introduced myself and I was still in "Be Super-positive" mode. I am... what?! I furrowed my brow a bit and then said haltingly, "...happy?" He blinked a couple of times, laughed politely at me, mumbled "good" or something and we rode down 17 floors in silence, the horrible cake openly mocking me the entire way.

Still, it was the only interview I ever failed because I forgot my own name, though.

So far, anway.