What is that running down the leg of your trouser?
The toilet humour post I did this morning reminded me of a piece of graffiti I once read on the wall high above a urinal, “If you are reading this you are pissing on your leg”. And low and behold... I did… piss on my leg that is, while reading it. Of course there is no connection between this and the police officer’s mishap, but that is how my mind works… it makes imaginary connections to things unrelated. I do however constantly get myself into situations where I "piss" on my leg, metaphorically speaking. I don’t know how or why it happens… but it happens. About a year ago, I had to return a faulty appliance I had bought at a Dions department store a few days before. Easy peasy… nothing to it… I have done this many times before… we all have. Well, apparently this time it was NOT going to be easy. I arrive at the store and the queue at customer service division is about a mile long. I am returning a goddam friggin rice cooker (don’t ask) and my arms are getting lame from holding it. See that is the thing about customer service departments, speed and efficiency is not part of their motto. So I put the box on the floor and shove it along with my foot… the only sensible thing to do, really. Standing in front of me is an old woman, about fifty-sixty, blue rinse… you know the type. She has a plastic bag with her and by the looks of it she’s returning an item of clothing. No, I swear this woman has Parkinson’s… either that or she is doing the jitter-bug jive… because she cannot stand still. She keeps fidgeting and shuffling... back and forth. I am thinking oy, I am tired just looking at her. I know I should ignore her but you see that’s the thing about me… I am a moron. So, I nod my head and smile at her, because that is what I do when I feel uncomfortable. She of course mistakes my nervous "friendly" gestures, so now she starts talking to me. Now I don’t talk to people when I stand department store queues, so I space out at around the time she calls me “young man”. Everything after that is white noise. And then it happens… she takes a step backwards or perhaps she is in the middle of doing TaeBo, who the hell knows. The heel of her shoe catches on the box the rice cooker is in and she falls backwards, into my arms. We do a Fred Astaire and Gingers Rogers dance step, but she is too heavy for me and I land flat on my ass, with the old woman between my outstretched legs. I look like Leonardo’s Vitruvian Man… only I am doing my impression of him while sitting upright. And there you have the two of us... on the floor... looking like members of the Oxford rowing team at the start of the JPMorgan Henley Boat Race. The poor bloody rice cooker careens across the floor much like Michael Schumacher at the Monaco Grand Prix, collides with a gondola end display of Pringles Potatoe Chips and they all come crashing down. People are scurrying for cover as the tubes of Pringle Chips morph into mini-missiles as they hit the floor. To an outsider, wactching these people run around, it may have seemed as if Nelson Mandela had come to town. The people standing around us collectively gasped for air, because that is what people do in situations like this… they gasp. Even the devil himself could not have stopped my rice cooker… it was on a bloody suicide mission. I manage to get away from my "rowing partner" by shuffling backwards on my ass and with the help of a few bystanders. The store looks like it had been it just had a clearance sale and the manager, God bless his soul, apologizes profusely to the shoppers for the chaos and confusion. I feel embarrassed... humiliated... and do not have the heart to tell him that the store was not at fault. All I want to do is hide. My geriatric accomplice thrives on all the attention and I swear she thinks she stepped onto the red carpet. The shop's floor staff frantically pick up the Pringles tubes and rebuilds the gondola end. As for me, I pick up my oh-so-kick-ass faulty rice cooker and make for the exit. I sent my girlfriend to Dions the following week to exchange it for me. I still have the rice cooker (the new one that is); I don’t think have the heart to part with... ever! We are kin, it and I, by association. Yeah, I pee-pee on me leg all the time, and when I don’t… other people will do it for me.
