Foot In Mouth Disease

Today at work I did an excellent job of jamming my foot right into my mouth. It was awful. Just awful.  With every word I uttered and every question asked, my foot got bigger and inched it’s way further and further down my throat. If ever there was a “ground please open up and swallow me whole” situation, then today was it.

To be honest it wasn’t all my fault. I was introduced to the son of a co-worker today, a 21 year old young man who had come up from Florida to spend the week with his family. Having absolutely zero information on the background story to this young man, which is apparently one of drama and rebellion, I proceeded to make some small talk, asking what I thought were some harmless routine questions. Turns out each of my “routine” questions did nothing but blow the lids off multiple cans of worms. 

It was early into the conversation when I began to realize I was walking through a potential minefield and with some fancy verbal footwork, or so I thought, I started to change up my line of questioning, hoping it would take me to the safety of some neutral territory. But no, no no, no such luck. The hole I was digging got bigger

Alarm bells were going off inside my head. The temperature in the room felt like it had jumped to 150 degrees. I’m under titanic pressure and I’m starting to sweat. My brain tells me to  “Shut it down. For the love of god, why won’t you just shut this conversation down”, but my mouth believes that the next sentence, the next statement will make everything right. “Silence brain, I can still save this”. But you know what? Brain was right, the situation could not be saved and eventually I had to raise the white flag. 

Everyone involved now felt uncomfortable, awkward and exposed. Fabulous, just fabulous. My work here was now done.

 “21 year old young man, it was very nice to meet you and now that I’ve managed to throw a gallon of gas on the fiery relationship you appear to have with your family, I will bid you adue, wish you all the best for the future as I begin to sink slowly into my chair, with aspirations of eventually crawling under my desk”.