THAT ONE TIME I EMBARRASSED MY BOYFRIEND FIANCE IN PUBLIC
[okay, so it's happened more than once
... I'm allowed SOME creative licensing occasionally]
Benjamin Kissell
Go ahead and raise your hand if you've never been the one causing
your boyfriend fiance's friends to ask
"What the f#@k is he doing with him?"
... put your hands down, I know you're lying.
Move over Laurie Notaro and Jen Lancaster - my favorite reigning queens of "Well, shit; I shouldn't have said that in front of your coworker/colleague/friend/boss/classmate/whatever" - and make room for someone new to join you in the "Fuck; did I really just say that?" Club. Hell, I think I should take a center seat ... or at least a nice plush one to recline in as I recover from the mortification that my very big, very loud, very persistent mouth got me into recently. Perhaps with some chocolate and a hot compress?
I have a big mouth - this I know - which is locked, loaded and apparently a hair trigger on an itchy trigger finger.
...........................................................
It's bad enough when you get yourself into trouble/awkward situations/mute staring contests when your mouth goes on autopilot and Verbal Diarrhea is produced [i.e. the inability to shut the fuck up and ERMEHGERDD STOP THE WERD FLOW ALREADY!]; but when your verbosity causes ripples in the fabric of reality impacting those around you? Well, it gets dicey. And when the one impacted the most is the one who's promising to stand up in front of God, your friends and family and probably more than a few protesters to begin a life together? Yeah. It's a whole new level of Oops I Crapped My Pants-isms.
My mouth is not unknown to cause these issues - one could say it's a condition which has plagued me since I made the unnerving mistake to open it and talk (back). My family was made aware of this situation early on and friends have experienced the occasional social setbacks when I blurt out something that might cause even the most Peter Griffin-esque person to reconsider the need for a verbal filter [for example: despite being about a decade in the past, I am NEVER living down meeting my best friend's Buddhist temple leader and lamenting losing my place to my ex as 'the most popular date in town' within a five-minute period. NEVER].
Let's rewind the scene to where the amazingly patient victim [i.e. my boyfriend fiance] was completely sideblinded despite being patently aware of who he's marrying [you know, the guy whose mouth has been off-and-running since the mid-1980's].
In short: I blame low blood sugar, lack of sleep and a natural propensity for a constantly running mouth on the following experience. I blame Red Barron for everything else.
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"What an idiot!"
If what follows causes you to shun me in shame ... well, you're probably not alone.
If the appropriate music for the situation could be piped through the tinny and gawdd-awful speaker-system which courses through the veins of Wal-Mart it would be the Muzak equivalent of the Jaws theme.
My innocent and loving boyfriend fiance and I were doing the shopping tango; alternating between what we affectionately call the "Wonderland of Crap" side (where all of the stuff we actually need is located and often hidden behind open pallet jacks and annoying Wal-Mart shoppers who don't understand the concept of MOVE ALREADY YOU CREEPY OLD BRAIN-FRIED METH HEAD IN NEON JEGGINGS) and the Produce/Groceries side (where we usually end the trip) when the first notes of the dreaded music should have flared.
Duh Duh.
Duh Duh.
Coming off of my third week in a row vacillating between overnight and mid-day shifts back-to-back-to-back and getting little-to-no sleep (and even less consistent food intake) my internal monologue filter was stripped to 'Well, maybe they won't hear me and even if they do, so what - I'm muttering' which is never a good sign. When an incredibly rude jackass pulled his cart out in front of us, cutting us off and almost causing the cart's handle to embed itself in my solar plexis, I stopped myself from slipping off my boot and tossing it at his head. Barely.
"mumble mutter mutter dark statement mumble mutter"
"Honey, what'd you say?"
"Nothing, mumble mutter mutter mutter"
This scene quickly mimicked itself several more times with increasingly snarky mumbling on my part by the time we'd meandered through the all-too-minimal dvd selection - [come on guys, enough re-packaged Rob Schneider flicks; they weren't worth paying to see in theatres and they aren't worth the cost of the $5 Discount Bin sticker you just slapped on them, either]. My stream-of-consciousness commentary and our debates on what to get/put back/not even reach for were shaving down to almost monosyllabic commentary at this point. To salvage our afternoon and good moods, we would have to finish the shopping toute sweet. And that? Meant a harried and hurried run through the grocery section grabbing whichever scented room spray caught my eye [Fresh Linen EVERY TIME NO EXCUSES], whichever brand of cat food we could grab and lift [Meow Mix, 20lb bag of indoor cat formula for Bitch Pudding] and pushing whichever off-brand of House Made Oreos, honey buns, imitation crab meet, soy/almond/lactose free milk and non-red dye #5 powdered drink mix we could get our hands on into the cart.
Duh Duh. Duh Duh.
Duh Duh Duh Duh Duh Duh Duh Duh.
We were wending our way through the frozen foods section ogling our potential pizza purchases [why yes, frozen pizza is a staple in any household I choose to live in] when the water went dark with chum and the sleek silouhette dove under the unsuspecting victims.
My poor doomed boyfriend fiance looked up from our heated debate on which (and how many of each) Red Barron Pizzas we should just "toss in the damn cart already" and caught the eye of a striking middle-50's housewife a good head shorter than me. A more suspicious [read: less secure] person would wonder why they both beamed at one another before launching themselves into an animated and earnest conversation.
"What are you doing on this end of town? I thought they had you chained back at the store?"
"Occassionally I gnaw my foot off at the ankle and break free."
A polite chuckle ensues from both.
Ahh - of course! The fact that my boyfriend fiance is a well-liked and rather popular guy at his work neatly explains this. I begin to tune out after my attempted rejoinder falls on not only deaf ears, but possibly muted faces (I'm sure she was only being funny when she rolled her eyes, right?). Of course being as that I was only half-listening due to my intense focus on pizza [I want this goddamn pizza already] my strictest attention to the verbal banter wasn't exercised and possibly missed a joke or three between them when I interjected.
And of course, that's when it happens.
DUH DUH. DUH DUH. DUH DUH DUH DUH DUH DUH DUH DUH DUH DUHDUH DUHDUH.
I cannot quite fully explain what happens next as my memory of what happened is hazy and blurred. When I come to, I found out it was a feeding frenzy full of bloodied water, bruised ego and - from eye-witness accounts [the harangued and now quite shell-shocked boyfriend fiance] - full on Verbal Diarrhea explosion worthy of any 24/7 news channel around-the-clock special as I spontaneously segue from normal, if not mildly introverted and exhausted Benjamin into ... wait for it ... Persistant Seller Man.
It seems the phrase "speaking of which ..." is now banned from my vocabulary as I attempted to steamroll into their conversation with this ominous segue change not once, but twice. Used car salesmen don't have the fanaticism I seemed to possess as I slipped into the waters and went for conversation-blood. Between the "not enough food in my system or caffeine" and "too many work-hours" my exhausted brain went right over the edge of what is appropriately lengthy and approachable conversation and right into "dude, not to sound all judge-y, but does he need medication or what?" depths. She was a leggy blonde all alone on a midnight swim - completely doomed.
"Speaking of which ... have you tried the Red Barron's Nacho Pizza? Because the Red Barron's Nacho Pizza is beyond amazing. It's like the best spicy nacho you ever had ... but better because it's freaking pizza! Look how cheap it is - I mean, you could get two of these for the same price as a Digiorno's! Here - let me grab one for you and you can switch it out!" Between my rounds of extolling the brilliance of such a culinary experiment, her protestations of fitting into her dance girdle and the possibly manic look to my eyes the middle-50's housewife made an abrupt and surprisingly courteous departure.
What was probably running through my wonderfully loving
and patient boyfriend fiance's head as I embarassed his poor ass.
To say that my future husband was a bit off-put by this encounter would be an understatement of epic proportions. He was flabbergasted and - to be honest - a little mortified. This was one of his semi-regular customers and the likelihood of his seeing her repeatedly in the near future was ... um ... certain. I'm sure a thousand excuses played in his mind on how he would write this off [foremost among them would likely be that I was indeed out of some much-needed ADHD medication]. Here he had been assuming I was his nice, normal [okay, demi-normal?] boyfriend with whom he lived and shared a cat and instead? I was apparently a stark raving nutter on the payroll of Red Barron Pizza. [Look, I'm not saying I'd never purposefully promote something or shill for a product - I'm only human ... I'm just saying that if I did, well, I'd be honest about it from the get-go and it'd be for something more impressive than pizza.] The drive home was tense as I tried to find the words to adequately explain what had happened and to sufficiently apologize for the carnage wrecked.
- Low Blood Sugar? True - I'd eaten maybe one meal in the last 36 hours.
- Exhaustion? Also true - I'd slept a cumulitive 8 hours over the last 48.
- I'm possibly batshit crazy with a side of Running Off At the Mouth Syndrome which puts the floodgates of your standard Verbal Diarrhea victim in the shade - both of which come firmly from my mildly-insane family? Let's face it ... that's pretty accurate.
So, I said the only thing I could: "I'm so sorry" because I was and am. I love my boyfriend fiance and cannot wait to celebrate our union ... even if he has to pretend I'm Lucy, Jeannie, Samantha or any one of the bajillion sort-of-embarassing-home-situation 50's and 60's sitcom housewives the husbands always seemed nervous to bring company home to.
Thankfully, he loves me beyond the pale and seems to have accepted this new revelation of batshit crazy with a wink-of-the-eye and a wry sense of humor. Proof positive? He began more than a few jokes over the last week with "Speaking of which ...". Between his loving laughter and my own sense of self-effacing humor we were back to normal swiftly [for which I'm eternally grateful].
Lesson learned - I have GOT to get a handle on this running-off-at-the-mouth thing ... and I will. At least, I intend to at least work on it and possibly keep a candy bar and/or coffee in my man-purse at all times to best avoid this Snickers Commercial-level of insanity again.
But, never ever forget:
the genius of Red Barron Nacho Pizza is not to be denied.
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