Remo's Two for Tuesday

 

1. What is the worst excuse you ever gave for not coming into work?

2. What did you do that day instead?

How about the reverse? A day when I went to work and they asked me to go home.

As one of two heterosexuals on my traveling softball team, finding another female in my suburban family neighborhood to play catch with wasn't easy, until the lesbian daughter [yay!!] of the people next door spent the summer with her folks.

So we played catch at night in the street when I didn't have a game.  I loved it, the one and only time there was someone who wanted to play catch and not swap recipes with this divorced, working mother of two. But the fun came to a crashing halt one evening.

We'd been playing for about half an hour when she threw the ball way over my head. So I ran down the street after it, since there wasn't a backstop. For some reason my right leg buckled under me as I ran and I crashed -- nose and lips first -- into the gravel and tar pavement.

My teeth!  My teeth! was all I could say. Only it came out as Mmnp feef! Mmnp feef! Based on how hard I hit, I was sure my two front teeth were history. Four years of braces in the toilet. Well, I don't know why, but amazingly they weren't smashed to bits. Or even cracked. That was the good news.

The bad news was that my face went from peaches and cream to chopped tomatoes and raw hamburger.  My upper lip was swollen and purple. My nose had a big red skidmark. When I saw how quickly my throwing buddy looked away after she saw me, I knew my face had turned into full contact pizza.

Eventually I looked in the mirror and I was stunned. My teeth were there, but I could barely see them because I had the lips from hell.  I took a tweezers and for an hour I picked tiny pieces of black gravel out of what used to be the space under my nose. So I wouldn't have little pepper spots tattooing a moustache there for life.

Even the dentist who made a special trip to his office to check me out gagged -- yes, actually gagged -- when he saw what was under the bandaid. His eyes watered and everything.  EEEEEEEEWWWW! 

But that wasn't my real problem. My real problem was I had a BIG presentation at a HUGE client the next day.  I called the office to see if it could be rescheduled.  No, we've got to do it tomorrow.  But I fell down and hurt myself. Do you have to go to the hospital.  Well, no, not really.  Can you put a bandaid on it. Yeah -- I can put a bandaid on it.  Arsewipes.

So I went in to the office the next day. Dressed in a power suit with matching power shoes.  And a Halloween face. I covered up as much of the hamburger as I could and hid the bloody parts with a giant bandaid that made me look like I had a distorted and very beige upper lip.

Along with the shock, I could see fear in their eyes.  OMG!  She REALLY hurt herself. Funny, that's what I said yesterday. [What they wanted to say was -- damn she looks way too ugly to make the presentation.] Well, we just HAVE to reschedule.  I believe I said that too.  And they told me to go home and come back when I looked better. They weren't kidding.

 

Of course, there was also the time I called into work [different job] and said my mother was hospitalized in a coma [she had cancer but it was in remission] and I needed to take the week off to be with her.  Then I just slept in and farted around for five days.  Mrs. L