Several years ago, I was involved with getting a CPR
class set up for our employees. We had
an RN at the time that was certified in CPR that had agreed to do the
class. However, he needed the “dummy”
that is used in these classes to demonstrate the technique. I called the local Red Cross and arranged to
borrow one. This required that I go pick
it up and return it after its use. The
class went well, we all got a chance to resuscitate the dummy though we had
called it the “body” all day. Later when I was en route to take the dummy back,
I stopped off at a convenience store to get a snack. When I got to the register, I recognized the
lady from the Red Cross in line across the counter from me and said “ I was
just on my way to see you. I’ve got the
body in the trunk.” The clerk stopped
ringing up my purchase and turned around to see who I was confessing to. Sometimes we say things that just come out
sounding a little different than we intended.
If you know me at all you know
that I am not a plant person. Every
plant I have ever owned has died. I have
even killed cactus. If you ever see a
plant in my home, I assure you it is either plastic or a gift for someone. I have no patience for knowing when to water
or what kind of light a plant needs, etc.
I am a very nurturing person…with people, even animals. Plants I can live without. Our office has a variety of plants, many of
them given to us after a funeral of someone we took care of, or sent to us in
appreciation of our service. There are
plants everywhere in the
office. When I took the job, I made sure
that taking care of the plants wasn’t in my job description and that pesky
sentence “other duties as assigned” didn’t include plant care. Yesterday, the plants looked a little droopy
as our “plant caretaker” has been out of the office this week. Another
co-worker and I were in the ladies room which is down the hall from our
offices. We are in a building with many
other businesses and we share the restrooms.
I was in one stall and my co-worker in the other and we were talking
about the plants. I said “ well I am not
good with them at all and they are all going to die anyway if its left up to
me. They may as well just die. I haven’t given them water or any food for
days. We have too many to take care of anyway. She laughed and said I know what
you mean. When we exited the stalls
there was a lady from an office down the hall.
She has come into our office before to bring us mail that got to the
wrong office and so she knows where we work.
The door clearly says HOSPICE on it.
She had a funny look on her face as she entered the stall. And then as I got back to my desk I replayed
in my mind the conversation she had heard. I hope she knows we were talking
about plants and not our patients. I am
going to make it a point to go over today and tell her that just “in case”.
I still laugh out loud when I
think of the muffin incident. If you
missed it, I had stuck a blueberry muffin in my jacket pocket on the way out
the door to the dog park with Quincy. I
was sitting on the park bench when a man and his dog walked by. The dog bounded
up to me and started sniffing my “lap”.
The man apologized as he was trying to pull him away and I said “that’s
ok, he probably just smells my muffin”.
Realizing what I said and knowing that muffin is slang for a female body
part I immediately started trying to back track from that sentence. I mean “my blueberry muffin in my coat
pocket, I’m diabetic so I have to carry a snack with me, I showered this
morning, etc.etc as he backed away from
the Crazy lady.
Once I left a message on my
husband’ s voice mail that went something like this. “Hi , its me.
I am going to deliver to the naked guy and then I am going to Motel 6 to
meet this guy from work to give him my package and then home to shower” . Naked guy was the name I had coined for a guy
on the meals on wheel route I did because the first time I took his meal to
him, he was ..well, naked. And the motel
6 Parking lot was the most central place to meet my co-worker to give him the
fed ex package we needed him to take to Tulsa with him on his way to the
airport for a flight. Had I left that message on the wrong voice mail
in error someone would definitely gotten the wrong idea and called me in to the
vice squad. LOL
Once I gave an in service at
work on stress. As part of the presentation I had ordered smiley face stress
balls for everyone. Immediately
following my presentation, I had arranged for an insurance person to give a
presentation on our insurance plans and benefits. As I introduced her and she looked out on a
conference table of people holding smiley face stress balls in their hands, she
said “it’ll take me a second to get set up, so go ahead and play with your
balls while you wait. Realizing what she
said, she turned quite red and began to sputter as we all laughed out
loud. What an icebreaker that was.
Sometimes it’s not even what
you say but how its heard. Like my son
Andy who thought that the song Little Deuce Coupe was little douche coup until
I told him otherwise. Or the time he
asked his dad what it meant to spin the night thinking he heard spin instead of
spend. Or when he was very small asking
once after church when we had sang the And
He Walks with Me hymn he thought we were singing Andy walks with me…”look mom,
I am walking with you like the song” Or the time he wanted to go to a movie
with a friend and told me that it didn’t have any “sex in the window” meaning
sexual innuendo. Or mixing up that we
were on our way to get a beagle at the kennel for Chris’s birthday by telling
his friend we were going to get a bagel at the Kettle.
Or that he had to go to the
doctor after being bitten by a tic to make sure he didn’t have key lime
disease. And then there is my son Chris who overheard the doctor say he was
allergic to mold and thought he heard “moles” and spent a good deal of his time
avoiding the little furry brown animals. LOL
Or the time his teacher asked about how our visit to the Zoo was because
Chris told her the gorillas were after his dad after overhearing me tell my mom
that the guerilla forces in Bottswana Africa where Mike was on a job were near
the complex he was staying at.
My friend Lynelle was at a dance
once and a couple told her they were swingers and asked if she liked to
swing. Thinking they meant swing dancing
she enthusiastically replied “yes, I love to” before a friend yanked her away to tell her
the couple weren’t swing dancers but actual meaning they had an open marriage
and different sexual partners at times.
Lucky she had a friend there that to yank her away before she agreed to “swing”
with one of them. LOL
Our social worker went to a
seminar the other day on helping children understand death and dying. She was telling us about how they were told
that sometimes we make it worse on kids by trying to “sugar coat” the
truth. Some of the examples were people
who had told young children that their mom or dad or loved one had “gone on a
long trip “ or “God needed her in heaven”or
the worse “grandma just went to sleep and didn’t wake up”. To a child this translates to “they’ll be
back, God is mean, or I’m afraid to go to sleep now. Better to “call a spade a spade” as my dad
always said There are ways to tell the
truth tactfully, or explain something in a way that it may not be fully
understood but not confusing on top of the sadness. My hospice co-workers laugh at me sometimes
when someone says Mr. so and so expired. I hate that term. Milk expires, library books expire, human
beings don’t expire. I always say “oh
really, where was the expiration date stamped.
And speaking of kids, be super
careful what you say in front of them.
Better to adopt the mindset that kids will ALWAYS repeat what you don’t
want them to…and when you least expect it.
I once worked for a man who was a notorious jerk. I handled it fine. I just didn’t let him get to me. I did my job
and avoided any conflict. When people would ask where I worked and I told them
they would say “you’re kidding! How can
you work with him? He’s such a jerk.”. Sometimes after a long day at work I would
refer to him as the jerk when talking to my husband. Eventually, I left that job and went to work
for a super nice man who happened to go to the same Church I went to. One day after the service, he came up to me
and my son Andy who was about 4 at the time and said “oh so this must be Andy”
to which I replied Yes, and Andy this is my boss Mr. Martin. Without hesitation, Andy looked at Mr. Martin
and said “are you the jerk?”. I could’ve
died. Luckily, he knew exactly who Andy
was referring to having been the one to recruit me away from the real “jerk”, a
competitor. Or the time I introduced him to a co-worker and he said in a rather
loud voice as we walked away “is she the one that stirs the soup” meaning the “stirs the pot”, the office
gossip. LOL
In the medical field, there
are a lot of terms and abbreviations that are used and I remember the first
time I was looking at a nurse note and it said Patient is SOB I thought, well that’s
calling a “spade a spade”. LOL I thought it was kind of rude and I hoped
that the patient never got a hold of his chart and read that. The next time the nurse came in I said, so
you don’t like Mr. so and so huh? And
she said, I love him..Why would you think that?
I said well you called him an S.O.B. in your note. Ok, now I know that is the abbreviation for
short of breath. She got a good
laugh. Now there are some people that
may be and SOB S.O.B. on extertion but that’s a whole different subject. Or listening to the nurse in our team meeting
say that someone had a wound on their coccyx..
I thought that was a man’s private part, that the slang word was a
shortened variation of that. Until one
day when one of them reported that MRS. Something or other had a sore on their
coccyx . How can that be I asked? They all got a good laugh on that one. FYI Coccyx
is what you sit on. Not surprising since I thought weeping edema
was some sort of psychological term that a counselor or social worker would
address. Until I found out it was where
you are so full of fluid from the disease process that the water starts to come
out of your pores.
And then there are the smart
phones who think it’s their job to correct what you type. Unless you spell every word correctly as you
type it you can expect the unexpected.
Once I typed that I couldn’t go somewhere as asked because I was going
to a graduation party. Must’ve missed a
letter cause what my friend go was “im going to a gestation party”. Now that’s gonna be a lonnnngggggggggggggg
night. LOL And who hasn’t accidently sent a text message
to the wrong person. Like that want to
meet at noon for “lunch” wink wink message meant for her husband that my friend sent to
her boss instead. Or the time I sent out a text to the employees about the date
of the Christmas party and the chaplain sent a back to me that was meant for
his wife that read Hey pookie bear, want to be my hot date for the company party
on the 18th?” He was never
the same after that. What had become a
friendly Hi LeeAnn how are you every time I saw him turned into Good Morning
Mrs. Byers if he couldn’t duck into the hallway and avoid me.
Maybe there is something to
that old adage “think before you speak”
As someone who usually does it the other way around I have had some
pretty good foot in my mouth moments through the years and I’m sure there will
be many more. Hopefully, none will be so
bad that I can’t laugh about them and move on.
And the adage needs to be amended
to "think before you speak and review before you hit send. "
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