You fail spectacularly. Almost flamboyantly. Not in the “good” way championed by Silicon Valley. But in the “Oh my God, is he okay?” way. You don’t just put your foot in your mouth, you put your foot in your mouth while falling down the stairs and shitting your pants at the same time. This is a trait that’s been present in all phases of your life. As a seventh-grader, you subjected yourself to a year of savage ridicule because you imagined that playing the flute like the satyr Pan might help you with the ladies. (It didn’t). As a young lawyer, you sent an “anonymous” and chiding firm-wide email which instantly revealed your identity because it featured vocabulary nobody else uses, and analogized to both Hamlet and The Iliad. You’ve gone to the ER when you thought you had a concussion that was just a hangover, and you’ve gone to the ER when you thought your appendix was bursting when you had in fact just eaten too many granola bars. In short, you’re a ridiculous person. And when a person is ridiculous, their chief coping mechanism is learning to laugh at themselves. And holy shit do you laugh at yourself.
What’s more, the ability to laugh at oneself is your favorite trait in others. It’s almost a litmus test. If a person laughs at themselves, you usually love them. And if they don’t, you’re probably going to dislike them.
Given the gloom and doom of your last blog post, it’s time for something more lighthearted. So you’ve gathered three stories here, in no particular order, that are related only in that they all feature you in mortifying or hilarious situations.
Camp Disaster
It’s the summer of 1985. You’ve just finished seventh grade (the worst year of your life), and you are attending Bible Camp with your cousin. In terms of relative awesomeness, Bible Camp falls somewhere on the pecking order below “Fat Camp”, and above Get-Your-Balls-Stomped-by-Comanches Camp. While kids at other camps engage in archery and canoeing, bible campers mostly sit around and talk about God. Sure, there’s some playing of capture the flag once in a while. But you talk about God a lot – in the morning after breakfast, in the afternoon once the chores are done, at night while mesmerized by the fire. And on top of that, campers are frequently called upon to talk about what all this talking about God means to them. Meanwhile, God is like “Hello? You guys know horseback riding is a thing, right?”
You are having an okay time at camp. Because, while there is a lot more Leviticus and Jeremiah and “so-and-so begat so-and-so” than the diet of none that you would normally choose, at least nobody is jeering at you or calling you “flute boy” and “faggot”. Unfortunately though, you also have a terrible stomach bug. Which is why this is a story at all.
It is lunchtime on a Tuesday. You have just consumed a large helping of chicken cacciatore when you feel an urgent need to defecate. Inexplicably, the bathroom is an unreasonably long walk from the mess hall. This will not go well. You grit your teeth and begin your trek. You walk with an awkward, clenched gait while you pray to the God everyone has been talking about that he not forsake you before you reach the stall.
As you approach the nearest toilet, the dam breaks. You jerk your pants down but cannot stop the explosive geyser that jets from you. It sprays in a nightmarish semi-circle as you turn your torso to position for a toilet landing, splattering all over the toilet paper dispenser, the stall wall, the back of the toilet, the seat – everywhere. All you can manage to do is stand, knees bent, with your pants around your ankles as foul ichor erupts from you as if from the bowels of Hell itself. It stops just long enough for you to waddle out of the destroyed stall and into the neighboring one. You mange to sit on this toilet before the next several detonations occur. While seated, you take stock of yourself. You will throw your underwear away, but your pants seem to have escaped mostly unsoiled. Still busy with literally gut-wrenching aftershocks, you manage to take off your shoes in order to fully remove your pants (so you can discard your underwear). You are still defecating when you hear the tolling of a bell. You don’t know it yet, but it tolls for thee.
You continue your business for a few moments more, and the revolting act of awkwardly wiping parts of your body you shouldn’t have to wipe. And then the portent of that bell dawns on you. A dagger of terror strikes your heart. That is the chore bell! And while it signals that you are supposed to report somewhere to do something, more importantly, it signals that a co-ed team of campers is supposed to report to the bathrooms to clean them. Now! A team of boys and girls are coming here, to this hazmat disaster site where you still sit, half naked, to clean it! Right now!
You wipe yourself with the deranged fury of a madman and scramble to get your pants up. No time to don your shoes, you clutch them to your chest and race to the exit. You stop at the trash can to throw away your underwear, but then think better of it, fearing it may be a clue that would help them identify the monster responsible for belching forth this awful, Lovecraftian horror. So you keep it in hand, along with your shoes. Barefoot and humiliated, you flee the scene of your crime.
You can’t run to your cabin yet, because there may be people approaching from that direction who could witness your escape and connect the dots. So you hide in the nearby woods, getting down low in the tall grass to better avoid detection. You stash the soiled underwear beneath a fallen tree branch and cover it as best you can. You are pulling your shoes back on when you hear the screams.
Boys and girls alike shriek in utter pandemonium. They have discovered the noisome evidence of your misdeeds, and have lost their freaking minds. An adult counselor tries to maintain order. He keeps yelling for them to stop panicking, but there’s no hope of that. The sounds of their screams and their torment is unbearable. Like hearing a murder as it happens. Or the ticking of The Tell-Tale Heart. Your shame is boundless. You must flee this cacophony, get to a place where the sounds of their collected agony cannot reach you. Crouched low, you begin to circle the perimeter of the camp, until you can emerge from the woods unseen and try to catch up with your own chore detail so that your absence (and therefore your guilt) goes unnoticed.
Later that night, as everyone is in their bunks, the counselor from the bathroom detail stops by each boys’ cabin in turn, trying to get clues as to the identity of the miscreant. He tells his tale to your cabin, and your counselor. As the details of the cleanup are shared, your cousin locks eyes with you. He knows you’ve been suffering from a stomach bug. Indeed, he saw your Mom pack Pepto-Bismol into your bag. He maintains a poker face and says nothing. Blood is thicker than water. And diarrhea.
Worst Impression
It’s the spring of 2004. You’ve just left your “big law” job and accepted a role as corporate counsel for an IT company headquartered in France. The entire eighty-five member legal department is traveling to a chateau in Bordeaux, France for a retreat involving several days of networking, powerpoint presentations, and bullshit. Your new boss – an Australian named Colin – is excited, as this will be your first opportunity to meet Gerard, the Global General Counsel. And you are excited too, because at this point you’re still early in your climbing of the corporate ladder. So this overblown nonsense matters to you.
A word on your boss: he’s a bit mischievous. For example, he once gave you a memo he wrote for Gerard, and asked you to proof or revise it while you were sitting in the North American CEO’s staff meeting. So you read it as you half-listened to the CEO discussing the objectives for the quarter. And as you read, you came across the following footnote: “Though not germane to this discussion, it is worth nothing that UK General Counsel James Loughrey has VD.” And like trying (and failing) to stifle a laugh in church, you burst out with a guffaw. And the CEO and all the vice presidents turned to you, because it appeared to everyone that you had just laughed at your CEO’s plan to meet the quarterly numbers. Later, when you described the scene to Colin, he was delighted, as he had been hoping for exactly this reaction.
At the retreat’s opening of ceremonies, Gerard greets all of the gathered lawyers, and explains that you all will be having a good amount of fun while staying in the chateau he has rented for the occasion. There will be golf and wine tasting and other activities. But he says that “our most important work” will be done on Friday morning. There will be “breakout sessions” where everyone will brainstorm solutions for some of the legal department’s most pressing issues. And he stresses the critical importance of being punctual for these sessions.
The week is largely uneventful. There is a tour of some church and a choir performance, a visit to an historic restaurant of some kind, lots of small talk over tepid coffee, and lots of PowerPoint presentations. During one of the many legal discussions, you invent a question to ask Gerard so you can appear smart and attentive. In response, Gerard, who loves to hear himself talk, launches into a long, rambling answer. This earns you a black look from Colin, who later approaches you to bark that if you ever prolong a “death by PowerPoint” session with a question to Gerard again, it will be your last.
Thursday evening arrives, and features a wine tasting of some fine Bordeaux. Everyone is tasting and then spitting their wine out. What the Hell? This is the best wine you’ve ever had! It’s almost a crime to spit it out! Like the naive rube that you are, you decline to spit the wine, but instead consume almost all that you are served. This is clearly a mistake.
Then the group leaves the reception area and retires to the bar, where the Dutch team is drinking beers, singing, and loudly toasting a recently deceased Dutch recording artist. You gather from the songs they sing that he is The Netherlands version of Neal Diamond. Their carousing is contagious, and they insist you drink beers with them. One of them learns you are from Texas, and insists you must be a George Bush lover. You explain that you are the exact opposite of a George Bush lover. He won’t accept this, and tauntingly says he’s going to start calling you “Bushy.” You tell him that if he does, you’ll call him “Dutch Cunt.” This earns you roars of laughter and many drunken slaps on the back. You’ve clearly found your people.
Later, Colin calls you over to drink whiskey with the insurance counsel, a disaffected Irishman named Paul. While you wouldn’t recommend drinking wine with the French and then beers with the Dutch, it is the sheerest lunacy to follow such behavior by drinking whiskey with an Irishman (to say nothing of an Australian). You are in the middle of protesting when Paul, whom you barely know, says “ah, don’t be such a wee pussy.” And in so doing, he evokes the universal Eleventh Commandment, which states “Thou shalt do the thing thou wants not to do whenever thou art called ‘pussy’ or ‘wus’ or ‘little bitch’.” And verily, you didst drink of the whiskey.
Colin decides you must all smoke some Cuban cigars. So he orders them from the bar, and asks if he can charge them to his room. The bartender says yes, and asks him his name. “My names is James Loughrey” he says, through drunken giggles. “Charge the cigars and all these drinks to my room.”
Eventually, you are the only three people left in the bar, and they inform you that you must leave. You stumble back to your room, and call the front desk to ask for two different wakeup calls, five minutes apart. Tomorrow is the most important day of the conference after all. Can’t be too careful. You also set the alarm clock in your room, and then fall into bed.
It is important to note at this point in the story that you don’t handle jet lag very well. At all. You’re a giant wimp when it comes to time zone changes. You slept for well over half the daylight hours of your honeymoon in Italy. You would wake at night and the shops would be closing. It was very frustrating for your long-suffering wife, who is tougher than you when it comes to sleep deprivation and . . . all other things.
So, with the understanding that you were very drunk when you went to bed, and the additional fact that jet lag kicks your ass, the rest of the story is predictable. You wake to light streaming through the window. This is not the soft light of morning. That’s weird. What time is it?! Blearily, you look at the clock. It is 1PM. Holy Jesus! You’ve missed breakfast AND lunch! Worse, you’ve missed the entire breakout session! The one Gerard said was critically important!
You leap out of bed, and the room spins. Oh shit. You veer into the bathroom and slam the shower on. You are still drunk, but also hungover in the worst of ways. Your mouth tastes of cigar, cat shit, and despair. You grab your toothbrush and lurch into the shower, leaning on the cold tile while you fumble to apply toothpaste. You take the fastest shower of your life and then stumble out to pull your suit on. In moments you are out the door, walk/running to the meeting area.
As you make your way, head pounding in time to the sound of your footfalls, you realize you are parched. In your haste to leave your room, you never thought to gulp any water. You pray that there is water in the conference room.
You arrive at the room where all the prior meetings have taken place. You peer through the small window in the door, but you don’t see the members of your assigned breakout group. Damnit! They must be in a different room. But where?
A colleague from the UK is on a cellphone call in the hallway. You interrupt him. “I’m sorry, do you know where I’m supposed to be?”
His jaw drops. “Are you just getting here?”
“WHERE AM I SUPPOSED TO BE?!”
“Through there” he says, pointing to the door you’ve just looked at.
“No, that’s not my group.”
“No, through there.”
A sinking realization dawns on you. This chateau does not have hallways like a normal hotel. The only way to get to some of the larger gathering rooms is to walk through other gathering rooms. You’re not going to be able to discreetly slip into the back of the room where your group is located. You’re going to have to do a walk of shame in front of all your legal colleagues, traversing the entire length of the room and crossing in front of the PowerPoint projector in order to get to the door on the other side of the room.
There’s nothing to be done for it. You bow your head, and sheepishly open the door.
Everyone looks. The German lawyer standing at the front of the room says “Oh, hello,” and pauses. Then, mercifully he continues. You walk the length of the massive room, and block the projector, and apologize when you inadvertently step on someone’s briefcase. Then you open the door to the next room to see that . . . it does not contain your group either.
You repeat the process, traversing the length of this room, and find that your group is located in the third and last meeting room. Colin is there, glaring at you. And Gerard is there too, at the front of the room, speaking animatedly to one of the younger lawyers. There is only one empty seat, at the opposite side of the room. You slink to it, and people have to move their papers and laptops to allow you space to occupy.
You see a thermos in front of you, and for a brief moment you hope to at least quench your thirst. But you lift it to find it empty. Of course. It’s been here all morning. You sit in aching and thirsty silence until the session ends twenty minutes later.
Colin is immediately on you. “Your absence was noticed. Gerard is furious. Let me handle it, but this was a big fuck up.”
“Oh no. I’m so sorry Colin. I-“
“I know what happened mate, and why. But it doesn’t change things. In fact, it might make it worse. My employee was too drunk to make it to the working session? It looks bad mate. You can’t be showing your ass in front of the general counsel.”
“I’ve got to apologize to him.”
“No. I’ll handle it. But you can’t ever screw anything up again. You’ve used your one strike.”
“I get it Colin,” you say. “But I have to apologize. I can’t not apologize to him after something like this. I’m sorry, but I insist.”
Colin pauses, weighing your words. His eyes narrow as he considers. Is that the hint of a smirk on his face? No, surely not. This is no laughing matter. You’ve maybe screwed up your career here before it’s even started.
“Oh-okay.” He says, almost chuckling. “If you insist. But I think it’s better left with me.”
“Thank you Colin. But I have to fall on my sword.”
He shakes his head, smiling now. Is he amused? Or is he smiling sympathetically? It’s hard to read, and you’re rattled.
You approach Gerard. You have to wait for a couple of lawyers from China to stop talking to him before you can properly grovel. When they depart, he greets you warmly and asks how you’re enjoying the day. He doesn’t seem furious. Whew! Although maybe he’s just being polite even though he really is angry and disappointed with you.
“Gerard, I just wanted to say I am so sorry about this morning.”
“Sorry? For what?”
“I’m so sorry for missing the-” before you even finish the sentence you realize what’s happened. Colin has lied to you. Gerard didn’t notice your absence at all. Colin was using the fact that you clearly screwed up as a tool to manipulate you, something to hang over your head and render you beholden to him. But you’re already speaking your apology. Too late to correct course now. “-breakout session this morning.”
“Oh no. Did you miss it?” He seems unconcerned about your absence, but also mildly concerned that you may have had some troubles this morning.
“You didn’t know?” you ask, looking for Colin out of the corner of your eye. “Colin said you were angry.”
He laughs. “I think Colin is having some fun with you. But I hope everything is alright?”
“Yes,” you assure him, and mumble something lame about jet lag not pairing well with Bordeaux. You are rescued from this awkward conversation by the arrival of some of the Brazilian team, and soon you are able to escape and hunt for water and ibuprofen.
Nine months later, Colin moves to a new job in Paris. In spite of your misadventure at the retreat, you are promoted into his former role as North American General Counsel. And you never drink Bordeaux again.
FOOT, MEET WEDDING MOUTH
It’s the winter of 2007. You are the best man at your brother’s wedding. You had to miss the rehearsal dinner for reasons to do with your childcare needs and your wife’s medical residency. So you haven’t had a chance to chat much with the other groomsmen, some of whom you barely know. Indeed, you flew in a mere couple of hours before the ceremony. You barely had time to put on your tux before you find yourself at the chapel, in the cramped little side room waiting for your cue.
Before filing into the room, someone said that “Mike is the only one of us who has done this.” So they’re all bachelors, and nobody else knows what this whole wedding thing is like. So it falls to you, then, as the elder statesman, to put everyone at ease. They are all standing in tense silence, your brother is a bundle of nerves, and nobody is talking. You’ve got to break this tension somehow. So like an idiot savant, minus the savant, you make a half-assed joke. A stupid, regrettable joke. An unfunny, horrible joke that reflects on your total lack of worth as a human being. This is what you say: “Have you guys looked at those bridesmaids? All of them are hot except for the Maid of Honor. Why do I always get stuck with the ugly one?”
[To pause the narrative for a moment – it is worth noting that one could spend days psychoanalyzing all the very many ways this statement reflects poorly on the speaker, a privileged white male. One could reference the double standard of beauty here, where a fat guy with bad hair feels entitled to opine on a lady’s appearance. One could decry the base cruelty of the comment. One could criticize the patriarchy and male culture itself, and how many men (consciously or otherwise) feel women’s bodies should be available to them, and compared as one might asses cuts of meat. One could question how a married man such as the speaker imagines he’s “with” the Maid of Honor at all. But these and other criticisms, while perhaps valid, are beyond the scope of this narrative. What this narrative intends to focus upon is the speaker’s horrifying propensity to put his foot in his mouth.]
As the words leave your lips, something electric crackles in the air. You don’t know exactly how yet, but you know immediately you have said the wrong thing. Very wrong. Terrible. You have said a very wrong and terrible thing. The room is still silent, but you know in your very bones that have to somehow take it back, to urgently unsay the very thing you have just said. You have to either go back in time right now, and not say what you said, or the earth needs to open up and swallow you into a painful and well deserved death.
You’re still reading the room. Your brother’s eyes lock with yours, and there is a gleam of amused horror and delight in them which confirms the awesome gravity of your misdeed. Is this someone’s sister? He’s inhaling to speak, and you’re already trying to say something to take the sting out of your insult.
“Because I . . .” you say, desperate to fill the space but unsure of what you’re about to say. You reach for something, anything to explain away your comment. “. . . because I . . . like blondes.” Really? That’s the best you’ve got? Your explanation to these men is that you called the maid of honor ugly because she’s a non-blonde? Good Lord Michael. You are the fucking worst.
As you speak, Patrick is moving toward the door. He keeps his shit together long enough to say “excuse me a second,” then he is out the door, and on the sidewalk doubled over, shrieking with laughter.
Nothing has improved in the room. Everyone is looking at you silently, meaningfully. Their eyes all say “what the fuck?” Well, everyone is looking at you but this one guy that you’ll call Mr. X. He is looking at the wall. Oh Jesus. It’s Mr. X. You’ve somehow offended Mr. X. But how exactly? He’s the one who said nobody else was married. The tension is unbearable. You’ve got to escape, and you’ve got to learn why your brother is laughing his ass off. You exit the room.
Patrick can’t breathe he is laughing so hard. You grab him by the shoulders. “What did I say? Why are you laughing? WHAT DID I SAY?”
Tears stream down his face. Between gasps, he manages to say “Dude, she is the mother of his kid. You just insulted Mr. X’s common law wife!”
Oh no. Dear God in heaven, no! Your mind reels. You are the absolute worst person alive. Why did you say that? Why are you . . . the way you are?!?
You have to apologize. You have to apologize right now. But now it’s time to go inside. Oh crimony! You begin to file in, but try to get close to Mr. X while you do so. “I just wanted to apologize for what I said back there. It was a stupid joke, and I don’t know why I said it. I didn’t mean it. She’s lovely, I was just trying to get a cheap laugh, and I’m so, so sorry.”
“What are you talking about man?”
He looks at you blankly. You blink. “The thing I said about . . . well, I’m not gonna repeat it, but the rude joke I made back there. I’m really sorry, and I shouldn’t have said it, and I didn’t mean to insult anyone. I wasn’t thinking. I’m a dumb ass.”
“You’re confusing me man,” he says in a monotone. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” It is the least convincing lie you have ever heard. You understand what he’s trying to do, to pretend like he doesn’t know it happened, so that you can act like you didn’t say something absolutely unforgivable. But you can’t forgive yourself.
“You’re kind to try to spare me this,” you say, as you shuffle to take your position. “But I’m an ass. And I’m sorry.”
“I’m not sparing you man. I just have no idea what you’re talking about at all, and we should probably drop it.” There’s no way that he doesn’t know what you’re talking about. He was one foot away from you in a silent room when you said it. But you have to let it go, because that’s what he wants, and of course he should get what he wants in this context.
Later that night at the reception, you will stand up to give the best man’s toast. And it will be typical for one of your toasts: long, flamboyant, funny. It will roughly follow your typical formula for wedding toasts, which starts with a lot of hard hitting jokes about the groom, continues with a few gentile jokes about the bride, transitions to something heartfelt about the bride, continues with something heartfelt about the groom, and finishes with some quasi-poetic toast to them both. Based on the enthusiastic responses of your aunts, uncles and other audience members, you will convince yourself that you rocked the house (whether or not that is actually true). And you will sit down, and it will be the Maid of Honor’s turn to speak.
She is terrified of public speaking, and she has just witnessed your peacock self walking all over the stage for fifteen minutes, delivering a soliloquy like a thespian or a would-be Clarence Darrow. Because you are a lawyer and you were an actor, back in high school. And public speaking is kinda your very favorite thing to do. And tears fill her eyes. And she gestures toward you, as if to say “I have to follow that?” Then she manages to choke out a truly sincere “I love you both! Congratulations!” And she sits down, crying.
And have you mentioned that you are the absolute worst?