This Is Nuts

In case there are those who might be inclined to think that my embarrassing moments are all behind me this next story comes from a more recent encounter that occurred this past summer. I have to preface it by saying that it's not nearly as painful as the previous but much more comical. Think of it more as a reincarnation of a cartoon caper.

I was sitting on my couch watching some television while I was mixing up some gelato, and before you all get distracted, no, the gelato did not turn out well. Then I heard a sound which sounded to be coming from the kitchen. I didn't think it was too strange and that it was probably just one of my friends letting themselves into my home. I called out only half expecting any response and wasn't surprised when I got none. A minute later I heard a much louder cacophony of sound. Someone was definitely there. I walked to the kitchen, mixing bowl in hand only to discover that the entry door in the kitchen was still tightly closed. Very Strange. Then it happened again, only this time it came from behind me, from near the sink. I spun in place only to see two small black eyes staring back at me. It was a squirrel! A squirrel had chewed through the screen window above my sink and had climbed in and was now sitting on its haunches staring back at me. I didn't know what to do so I thought the best thing to do was to throw the fork I had been using for mixing at him. I missed but my fuzzy tailed friend took off running down the counter. I had him on the run so I did the first thing that came to mind and chased after him. Once he had reached the end of the counter and nowhere to go he turned around and once again we were face to furry face. Then the tables turned and he began running right at me and my instincts kicked in and I started running in the opposite direction. Soon it was me who was cornered in my small kitchen and I spun around. Utensil-less I found myself with no ammunition so I did the next best thing and started yelling at him. "Ahhhhh!!!" Over and over again I launched my verbal assault hoping my words would direct him towards the hole in the screen window from where he had come. After a minute of running back and forth, yelling and squeaking I finally managed to corral the squirrel back outside.

It was finally over. The intruder had left and as I looked around my kitchen at the chaos that had taken place in the preceding minutes I saw my cat staring quizzically from the door frame wondering what all the commotion was about and why I had to interrupt her from her afternoon nap. I guess the saying is true:
I scream,
Squirrels squeak,
We all scream,
When I make Italian ice cream.

It's All Downhill From Here

Here's another treasure from a few years back that is sure make you feel better about yourself by comparison. As a warning, this story is particularly bad so do not use this story to make any snap judgments about me. I wish things had happened differently.

At the time I had recently started a new job and was on my first business trip out to Colorado to meet with partnering company. We were in a session of afternoon meetings and presentations and we found ourselves waiting while the presenter was plugging into the projector.

I began small talking with one of the persons there who happened to be a very avid skier. He then began telling this story about how he and two of his friends had climbed this mountain to do some back woods skiing one afternoon. He went into this gripping story of how on the way down the slope an avalanche had broke and began chasing them down. They couldn't outrun the wall of snow so they headed towards the edges to try to get out of its path. He concluded this adrenaline filled story with him finally reaching the tree line off to the side.

I had this huge smile and wide eyes on my face as I exclaimed how incredible and awesome that experience must have been. The adrenaline junkie in me was jealous over the excitement he must have felt while outrunning an avalanche. I told him all this while trying to hold back a laugh because I thought that must have been the best time of his life and nothing could top such a fun experience.

Then everything changed. I watched as the face of this racer of avalanches became beet red. My laughter faded quickly. The story wasn't over.

"After the avalanche had passed I went back out onto the slope. After I found my first friend and realized it was already too late I had to decide if I should continue to unbury him or search for my other fiend."

That's it. That's how this story ended, with a twist I never imagined happening. Out of all the embarrassing moments and awkward situations I have found myself in this one left me feeling the worst. Here I was on one of my first business trips laughing as my host told me the story of how he lost two of his best friends in one swift swoop of an oversized snow bank. I was paralyzed, I couldn't say anything. I didn't want to make things worse.

I never went back. That was my first and only trip there. I can't help but think this has helped solidify my hatred for the winter season. Even though this occurred in July I feel completely justified in using this as a supporting reason as to why winter is the worst season of all. The more important thing to take away is to save you laughter until the end because there may be a punch line you just don't see coming, one that will knock the wind right out of you.

Fences Make Good Neighbors

It's been a while since my last entry, but do not worry, I've got a good story to share. It's not so much embarrassing as it is just a moment that I thought I would get to share with everyone else. It mixes relaxation, camping, and animals in such a way that made for a very exciting weekend.

Late this past summer my friends and I planned out a nice long weekend camping trip on the outskirts of Muskegon. We had it all; there were friends, fires, s'mores, grilling and tubing down the river. But that wasn't the most exciting part. The first night we were there we were bombarded by an unexpected guest, Mr. T Storm. We're not talking about a light sprinkling, We're talking about nearly 7 hours of cats and dog raining. If you've ever stayed in a tent in the rain you know that no matter how "water proof" a tent claims to be somehow water manages to persevere and find a way inside. By the time morning came we were laying in a huge puddle of rain water.

Although the weekend was off to a rough start everything turned around after that and we all had a blast tubing, sitting around the fire and grilling. By the time it was time to go who knew that the most eventful part was yet to come. We had heard that there was some kind of fenced in animal reserve like area. We searched around till we found it and then we walked around the perimeter till we ran into some fawns. They were right along the fenced and would like your hand when you put it through the fence. They would nuzzle right up to the fence while you would pet them. After petting the deer we continued walking along the fence until we came to some giant elk and then just beyond those were some bison or buffalo or something like that. Considering how tame the fawn were I decided to see if the buffalo were equally as friendly. I slowly walked up to the fence. Now I have to pause to clarify. When I saw fence I'm talking about a weak chicken-wire like fence, not the inter-woven chain ink variety. I found a small break in the fence and stuck my hand through. A buffalo that was about 15 feet away say my hand and flipped out. The next sight I saw was a huge 8 feet buffalo was barrelling toward me and the only thing between me and him was a pipe-cleaner fence. My initial reaction was to run but then I remembered that you aren't supposed to make any quick motions. I was torn, run for my life, or stand my ground against a couple ton bison. No where have I ever heard the correct response to a bison attack. After doing some kind of shuffle-stutter-step dance, right before the beast was going to smash through the fence it fell over onto it's side repeatedly. Odd... Well I wasn't about to wait for it to come to it's senses so I began to slowly walk backwards away from it. The entire time I was walking away it continued to follow me along the fence line. When we came along to a corner in the fence it got "stuck" and I was able to safely lose him.

That buffalo encounter was the exciting conclusion to the fun filled camping weekend extravaganza. Now for a few words of wisdom that may save your life someday. If you ever find yourself being attacked by a buffalo don't run, but don't not run either. Instead, as fast as you can, build a chicken-wire fence.

What's the Worst that Could Happen?

This event occured quite a while back. Back all the way to my senior year of high school. As a part time job I was working at a performing arts theatre doing things like selling conscessions, counting tickets, and changing the marquee. At this time I had already been working there a couple years and was pretty much running on autopilot. One night after a show while doing inventory my manager told me that she would be out of town for the next show. Since I was fairly confident in myself I told her that I could manage the whole front lobby that evening. I had no idea what I was getting into. For the next show the trouble began even before the first curtain went up. I was informed by an usher that one of the guests were telling them about some kind of fire outside the lobby. When I went to investigate I found a garbage can on the sidewalk with smoke billowing out the top. Apparently someone finished a cigarette and thought it would be fine to just throw the rest into a trash can. After dousing the would be fire with a couple buckets of water I thought for sure the rest of the night would go smoothly. I was wrong. During the first intermission a guest approched me to tell me that the women's bathroom in the basement was taking on water. Taking on water? I didn't even realize we were at sea. I hiked up my pants and began sloshing my way through a couple inches of water to toilet that kept gurglin water from the bowl. At that point the damage was down and the only thing I could do was to prevent it from getting any higher so I turned off the water, put up an out of order sign and have maintenance deal with it as soon as possible. I held my breath all through the second intermission hoping I could make it through it without incedent. The house lights flashed indicating the intermission was over and telling me that I could begin closing up and that I had made it through the evening in one piece. Then, it happened, a theatre guest came up to me with the strangest news yet. "Um...I think there is a bomb in the ladies room in the front lobby." A BOMB! She told me she heard this strange beeping sound coming from the next stall over but was too afraid to investigate. Without even thinking I went immediately to the bathroom in question. A plot to blow up the theatre? Not on my watch. After checking that the bathroom was unoccupied I walked in and sure enough there was the beeping sound the guest was complaining about. The echo of the beeping in the hard tiled bathroom made it impossible to determine the exact source by sound alone. I slowly opened the stall doors one by one not wanting to trigger a massive explosion. By the time I came to the last stall door I was drenched with sweat. Here it was the moment of truth....nothing, all the stalls were empty. After a 5 minute visual search I had found my IED near the garbage can. It turns out my bomb was not a dangerous IED but a harmless EAD, Empty Aromatic Device. The device that periodically sprays the room with the scent of a thousand fields of flowers had run out and when this occurs it begins to produce a very bomb like beeping sound. What an eventful night, fires, floods and a near terrorist attack. That just goes to show you what trouble you can get into when you try to help someone out. Next time you think to yourself, "What's the worst that could happen" don't rule out the possibility that the worst may indeed actually happen.

Speaking My Mind

This gem from my past occurred during my final Spring semester of college classes back in 2008. I was taking an Astronomy class with my friend Brandon just for fun and the class was meeting for one of our lab meetings in the evening. The class was down in one of the computer labs analyzing some data in which we were trying to fit some data to some theoretical model. After about an hour of adjusting values to get the best fit for the data the professor decided to take control and show the class what the fitted data was supposed to look like. He projected his Excel results onto the front wall and showed everyone just how well the data points fell onto his model for some binary star formation or something like that. While the rest of the class was looking attentively at the front of the class I glanced up at the professor's results and scoffed, "Pfff.....My data looks better than THAT!" Then I returned to whatever I was writing on the paper in front of me. It took a few seconds for me to process what had just transpired. I could feel the temperature rising in my cheeks as they turned red. I slowly raised my head to see Brandon sitting across from me just shaking his head at me. His expression on his face was telling me that I went too far. My gaze moved on to the rest of the class and I saw every pair of eyes on me, including those of the professors. I don't remember anything more about that class. This is just another instance of why you should think before you speak. Sometimes comments should go left unspoken.

It's All About Timing

Today's entry comes from the summer of 2008, soon after I had started a new job. Since it was a new job I wanted to make sure that during the first few weeks I tried to maintain a presence of professionalism. Freshly ironed shirts, nice pants, even continuing to wear a nice wrist watch even though it had died a few weeks earlier. The whole nine yards. Everything was going well and this day seemed to be fairly typical as I was sitting in an afternoon meeting. The meeting was running long and was going well beyond the time it was scheduled for. Out of habit I checked my watch to see exactly what time it was. After a moment of confusion after seeing that it was 8:48 A.M. I realized that I was trying to read the time from a dead watch. After trying to indiscreetly hide my watch I returned to listening with no further sense of time. A few minutes passed by and my boss leaned over to me and asked what time it was. It was obvious that he had seen me check my watch in the middle of the meeting and he too was curious to know how long the meeting had been going on for. Out of habit I instinctively checked my wrist again and again I was denied the correct time. My only response I had for him was, "I don't know." That's it. Nothing more. No explanation. "I don't know." From his point of view it must have looked like they had just hired some guy who can't even tell time. My boss gave me this questioning look which seemed to wonder why I wouldn't tell him the time even though I had clearly just checked my watch. It wasn't until well after the meeting that I realized what had transpired and just how inept I must have looked. By the time I had realized it it didn't seem like it was worth explaining why I wanted to keep the current time a secret from all others. My advice, watch out for meeting watch watchers.

Running In Place

It was the first couple of weeks of 2009 and I was just starting to pick up running in hopes of finishing a marathon. I went to the gym one day after work and began my workout on the treadmill. It was a quiet day and the only other person in the gym was the guy running on the treadmill next to mine. Straight in front of us was a television currently displaying the evening's news. Top of the headlines for this evening was the conviction of a child molester. Then they flashed the criminal's mug shot on the screen and the most prominent feature of the said criminal was an extremely "lazy eye". I'm talking about an eye that looked like it was going to jump ship the first shot it got. I decided, for whatever reason, that the appearance of this man on the screen was just the icebreaker I needed to start talking to my new running friend. "I can't tell, is he looking at you or is he looking at me?". The guy next to me turned his head to look at me and gazed right past me. Not because he was mad (well, maybe) or didn't see me, but because he too had a lazy eye! What are the chances that the only other person in the room, right next to me had a lazy eye as well? And why did I feel the urge to open up a dialogue with him? I decided to cut my workout short that day to prevent any more needless uncomfortable moments. Next time you find yourself running on a treadmill next to someone at the gym think twice before starting a conversation with them. There is nowhere to run, only the possibility to stumble over your words and end up on the ground humiliated.

In The Beginning

I would hardly consider my life exciting or in anyway out of the ordinary. As far as life goes I like to think I'm about par for the course. Yet time after time I somehow find myself in unbelievably awkward, outrageously humiliating and face burning embarrassing situations. These are the moments I'm aiming to capture here. To collect and share these moments which just might rival some of those zany moments that you think only happen in comedies. Hopefully you will read these and laugh or in some cases be thankful that you were not in my shoes.

Cheers, and Enjoy!

Jeremy