Embarrassing Half Hour

I left the office for lunch at 11:30, a few minutes later than I usually would, but not too bad. My coworker who usually goes with me was on the phone, so I was on my own, walking down to the other end of campus to meet my friend Jamie for lunch. No problem. It's overcast and kind of gray out, but it's semi-warm (40 degrees), so it's a nice day for a walk. Except for one problem - I have to go to the bathroom. Not number one - number two. Okay, I can hold it back until I get back from lunch, it's okay.

I walk down through campus, seeing that there are a LOT of students out today. For some reason, 11:30 on Wednesdays is a busy student time at lunch, and they were all out and streaming towards the dining locations.

Oh yeah, I do have to go to the bathroom. Commence butt clenching. I'll still be fine.

I get to the lunch place where I meet Jamie, and I join him at the table, taking out my sandwich and my yogurt container. Oh, the abdominal cramps are bad, now. I'm eating and clenching, kind of sort of in pain. But then the urgency passes, and all is well.

We finish our lunch, and walk out. He turns left to stand outside of the building where he works, smoking his cigaratte until he goes back in, and I go to the right to walk up the stairs and back to my end of campus. There are still a lot of students streaming across campus, and since only one set of stairs is open right now (they close two sets for winter, and haven't opened them back up yet), I have to find my way through the crowd to go up. I'm on the left side of the staircase, so I go past one guy and rush over to the right side to avoid most of the students coming down.

As I'm walking up and sideways, my right shoe slips off, I trip, and I fall on the stairs. You know how you fall going up stairs - my left leg was laying across two lower stairs, and my right hand was on one a little higher up. A nice girl asked me if I was all right, and I said I was, thanks, mumbling something about my shoe falling off. I didn't look at her - I was all about getting away from the scene of the accident.

And then an obnoxious student behind me begins guffawing loudly to his friends. I use the word guffawing to get across to you just how loud he was laughing. I walked a little faster, embarrassed as hell and hoping he would just shut up. He didn't. I walked halfway across campus with him laughing behind me before I got away from him (all the while thinking about how my orange and blue jacket makes me stick out, turning me into even more of a target).

On the way back, I was going to stop at the convenience store and spend the lunch money work gives us, but I couldn't do it with him laughing behind me, so I kept walking back towards my office building. I finally lost him, and I walked on, shame faced and hoping to just make it back to my office so that I could hide.

Remember the first problem I had, when I went to lunch? About having to go to the bathroom so bad? Yeah, well, it chose this time to come back in full force. I had to run into the bathroom as soon as I got to the building, and I barely made it in time.

My Wednesday afternoon is going fine so far, how about yours? Sigh.