Since last post was so heavy I thought I'd share an experience I had at work recently. It was last week when I naively thought I'd seen the last of that white stuff called snow. The place I work has a soda fountain in the break room. I limit myself to one mug a day of the hard stuff. Anyway I was at my desk working, sipping on my Coke when I needed to get up and ask my boss a question.
I stroll over to his desk and explain the situation when I'm shocked to see snow falling from the sky. Mid-sentence I exclaim, "Look it's snowing!" and point out the window. My boss swivels in his chair and right then my hand clasps around his mug, although I think it's my mug, I take a long draw and expect the bitter sweet liquid to tickle my taste buds when I realize it's water. Instantly I know I've made a fatal error. I zoom the mug back down like a bandit just in time for him to swivel back around. I realize that anyone who might have been observing the scene may have thought I purposefully tricked my boss.
I look at the straw and there is a pink lip gloss stain on it. At this point I'm stuttering trying to explain what I had intended to explain all the while the color is rising up my neck and into my cheeks and I'm suddenly feeling hot and uncomfortable. My mind is working about a million miles a minute. Do I tell him? Do I tell him?" I am mortified. Then a very juvenile thought pops into my head, like when I was in middle school, if you shared a chap stick with a boy it was like kissing them. I just kissed my boss. The phrase echoes in my head and suddenly I want to laugh, to just get hysterical right there in front of the unsuspecting fool. I just kissed my boss. The tell-tale pink lip print silences my rising hysteria and I'm looking at my boss and he's looking at me and I realize he's stopped talking. He explained what needed to be done and all I could think about was if he might have some contagious disease. I smile weakly and march back to my desk.
I should have told him. What kind of a freak doesn't confess something like that? He'll find out anyway when he takes a drink and tastes my strawberry flavored lip gloss. Can I tell him now though? He'll know I initially wasn't going to tell him. While my mind becomes a whirling dervish and my underarms kick into overdrive I keep stealing glances at that mug of his. It's like I'm afraid that straw is going to form lips like an object in Harry Potter that has been enchanted. I imagine it yelling my guilt to the whole room. "Shut-up straw," I mutter under my breath and continue on with my work. I never told him, and there's this certain weirdness there now that I'm sure he senses. One of these days I'll confess, if that blabber-mouth straw hasn't already.
