Sadly, this is a true story.
As many of you know, I work in an environment where 99% of the people I come in contact with on a daily basis are an average age of 83.
One day in particular will live on in infamy on my Top 5 Worst Things That Have Happened At Work List. In my head, I have deemed this incident "Old Man Cookie Mouth".
Explain, you ask?
Why certainly...
Scene: Me at the office.
Setting: Tra la la, life is good, minding my own business, ready to head out for my lunch break, happy as a clam. No, scratch that. Happier than a clam! I don't know many clams that look that happy. Unl
ess they have a pearl inside them...then they would be GIDDY, right? Oh wait, that's oysters. Never mind. Let's just say I'm fairly happy. Somewhere in between a clam and an oyster, on the mollusk scale of happiness. I exit my office suite and into the hall to make my way to the elevator. The hall is jam packed with all the old folks though. They had just gotten out of a class, and were milling around catching up on each other's medications and aches and "Guess who died?"'s.
I can do this, I thought. I can totally weave in between the conversations without being noticed and make my way to my car without getting trapped. Just be fast. Like a cheetah. But don't knock anyone over with a cane. Easy now. Steaaaaady. Steaaaaaady.
"Andy, my dear!"
Crap.
"Emmett, I'm just on my way out."
"Andy, the committee met and asked me to approach you and see if we could possibly switch from the powdered creamer to the liquid creamer? That stuff tastes like drywall dust."
Oh em gee. Is this conversation really going to suck up 5 precious minutes of my lunch break? And why do they have to stand so close to you when they talk? Ugh. Close Talkers.
He moves to bring a cookie to his mouth and I take the opportunity to answer quickly then try and bolt before he can speak again.
"Sure, Emmett, I will see what the budget..."
"Andy, don't talk to me about budgets..."
And as he interrupted me, my mouth was still open, trying to finish my sentence when all of the sudden, a chewed up piece of cookie came flying at me from his denture-cream glopped up mouth and landed directly on my tongue!!!!!
OH EM GEE WHAT THE CRAP IS THIS REALLY HAPPENING SICK SICK SICK GET IT OUT GET IT OUT GET IT OUT!
I am no statistician. In fact, I had to google how to spell 'statistician'. But I'm pretty sure the odds of someone spitting something out of their mouth and having it land directly in yours is, like, 1 in 468,933,246 or something like that.
I ran through the hall, spitting out what I could onto the carpet as I made my way down the stairs. No time to wait for an elevator at a time like this.
OH MY GOSH OH MY GOSH OH MY GOSH GET IT OUT GET IT OUT GET IT OUT GET IT OUT SICK DUDE SICK SICK SICK SICK.
Ran to my car, sped to the nearest CVS, where I promptly bought a king-sized bottle of Listerine. And not that nice, alcohol-free stuff that you would want to use when swishing at home. I'm talking about the old school, burn your entire palette, fresh breath for the next 2 months kind of Listerine.
I went out to the parking lot, sat in the drivers seat with the car door wide open into the empty parking space next to me, and cracked that bad boy open. I went through the entire bottle. Swishing. Gargling. Spitting it out into the pavement. I even swallowed some for good measure (and possibly hoping it would burn a hole in the memory cortex of my brain so I could forget this nightmare forever and ever Amen).
I must have looked like one of those sad drunks who can't afford alcohol so they get their buzz on mouthwash to make it through the day. All I needed was the paper bag around the bottle.
And THAT, my friends, is how I spent an hour of my life that day. Washing the remnants of Old Man Cookie Mouth out of my mouth. Wondering how I got here in life.
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Wanna kiss?
Cellulite and Tell You Right,
Andy
Just found your blog through a mutual friend - Lance Bobbe. He promised I would laugh out loud, and I did! :-)
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