Time Better Spent

Last night, I attended a meeting I did not want to attend…to gather information I had no desire to have.

I started the evening looking like this:

(Yes, I know...a little jaunty pre-holiday cheer. But I'm bright-eyed and bushy-tailed!)

When the guy 5 seats over began to cough a lot, I felt like this:

30 minutes later, the guy sounded like he was gonna cough up a lung.

Which made me look like this:

I was then momentarily distracted by the guy who got a call on his cell. He was sitting in the front row whilst a female attorney was speaking.

He took the call. No, I mean…he TOOK THE CALL. Talked in a normal speaking voice and totally interrupted this attorney, who looked properly appalled at this guy’s behavior:

Oops…how did THIS get here? And more importantly, what is that girl’s face doing kissing Kanye’s butt? (Well, that’s what it looks like to ME. Use your imagination.)

Ah. Here we go:

Only picture the offending cellphone talker an overweight middle-aged guy wearing a bright red baseball cap (yes, this was indoors), scrappy attire and he had full facial hair.

Now I look like this:

I’m left a withered husk of the lovely, baby-faced woman I was when I arrived. They’d literally sucked the life, health and every last ideological thread of decorum and etiquette right out of me.

So, I’m either going to die from whatever life-threatening disease that guy 5 chairs down is sending like a speeding bullet into my airspace, or I’ll crash and burn of embarrassment and sadness for all of mankind as I realize that “Cell Phone Schmuck” had no freakin’ clue what the problem was when the speaker finally chose to stop and wait till he’d finished the end of his stupid, meaningless call that he'd made at FULL VOLUME...as if he was sitting in his kitchen…or on his John Deere.

You’d think after such a humiliating disregard for common decency, he’d at least have run hurriedly from the room, in a vain attempt to lead us to believe there was a catastrophic emergency taking place down at his place of business, hereby known as Giggles (in my imagination). Not that we would have fallen for it...but he could have at least made the effort. But noooooo. He scans the room behind him...all of us glaring at him...and shrugs his shoulders with a look like, "what are ya gonna do?" Grrrrrrrrr.

Just when I thought I was DOOMED, I remembered MY phone!!!

I have email! I have text messaging! I have the freakin’ internet!!!

So, I email Spot: “I’m bored. This is boring. I am soooooo bored. How’re you?”

When she doesn’t return my email within about ten seconds, I look to see if any new emails have come in. I see one with the subject line “WOOHOO”. I smile…this must be JD! YES!!

So, I email JD: “I’m bored. This is boring. I am really, really, really bored. What’re you doing?”

About this time, the seminar draws to a close. No-one has any more questions, so we’re outta there. I exit the row in the opposite direction as “Hacking Up A Lung Man”, and pause for a minute to get a good glimpse of “Completely Clueless Idiot Cellphone Schmuck”.

I envisioned this parting look was on my face:

I don’t have to tell you who was the mouse.