It Would Have Been Funny...Part 1

I can't believe that this much time has gone by, but it's been five years since I started a little note collection on Facebook entitled, "It Would Have Been Funny If It Hadn't Happened to Me."

Trust me, y'all. It's still funny. In fact, I got a pretty extensive laugh out of reading these stories for the fifteenth time.

So for the next several days, I'll be sharing some tried but true stories from my real life, events that make me shudder and burst out into hysterics all at once.

This first installment is back from bygone days at my first real job as an assistant account executive at a small PR firm in downtown Greenville. I was a green (and not in the good way) 21 year old golden retriever, just fumbling through each meeting, each project, each moment of the day. Even then, I knew I wasn't meant for the business world.

As my sister would say, I was "CTL" (clueless to life), and then it got even worse.

I hope you enjoy reading about my humiliation as much as I do.
___________

Once upon a time, I was innocently drinking my coffee from Coffee Underground. Im sipping it when I suddenly feel the urge to GO.

So I run down to the one-seater in our break room. But no sooner have I flushed then the water starts backing up. "Great," I sigh. I can't leave it all filled with water. That would just be gross.

I jiggle the handle. The water just starts filling up. Faster now, over the rim. I thought it would go up and go back down.

But no, this is a small-scale model of the Hoover Dam. This makes me want to say another kind of "dam." This is a dam disaster.

Panic ensues.

WHOOSH! Toilet water, on my black pointy toed shoes.

"TERRY!!!" I squeal, filled with the most permeating humiliation and defeat ever known by woman-kind.

Terry is the renaissance man of the office, the paperwork guy, the building guy, the guy you ask when you don't know what else to do guy.

I thought he'd hear me, but it was no use.

I looked everywhere in the 5x5 space for a plunger. A stack of super absorbent beach towels. A shrink ray so I could successfully flush myself down the toilet, too.

Determined not to let the crapper get the better of me, I remove the lid, and jiggle the mold-covered balloon thingy with my bare hands.

Nothin.

The water is puddling now, coming up around my ankles in a sickening swamp of sewage.

"TERRY!!!!!" I scream. I can't get the water to stop. Nothing I do fixes it. No beach towels are appearing, although I prayed so hard I'm surprised God didn't beam them down just to shut me up.

Unless! Haha!

I can stop the water flow by holding the mold-covered balloon thingy up in the air.

Relief!!!

Until I realize that when I let go of it, the water starts back again. A waterfall. A deluge. A tsunami of sewage.

And I'm standing in an small ocean of toilet water.

Great.

I prop up the balloon thingy with a can of Lysol so the water stops, and miserable, defeated, I trek up the stairs to Terry's office, leaving toilet-water tracks behind me.

As we go down to get the crusty old mop and bucket, Terry as embarrassed as I am, I shudder at the day I've had.

Alas, pointy-black shoes soggy and armpits stained with plunging-induced-perspiration, the clogged toilet and I part ways.


So, moral of this story: leave the toilet clogged. I don't know why I didn't stick with my old motto: "Deny, deny, deny." Don't try to flush again. Just walk away and no one will be the wiser.


Now I know:
Forget business. Go into education. Then you can blame it all on a kid.