Not All Adventures are Outdoors

A Guest Post by Mr. Fabulous

When Matt asked me to do a guest post for his fabulous blog, I was a little surprised. I mean, sure Matt and I have a few things in common. We both collect Pez dispensers. We both shave our nether regions daily. And there have been a few nights when we have engaged in a little Brokeback Blogger action with each other, if you catch my drift.

But Matt is a rugged, adventurous outdoorsman. I, most decidedly, am not. You are not going to get me to go whitewater rafting if you held a gun to my head. If you threatened to burn down my village and make slaves of my children I would still refuse to go rock climbing. The mere thought of getting on a roller coaster makes me sweat profusely.

The only calluses I have are on my ass. And no, it’s not from the Brokeback action, wise guy. It’s from all the time I spend in my La-Z-Boy recliner.

But then I realized that I am an adventurer. I am a thrill seeker. I am a survivor, people. You don’t need to get in a raft or jump out of a plane or stick your head in the tiger cage at the zoo to be labeled a man of action. I am a grizzled veteran of the most treacherous terrain on God’s green earth.

The office.

Let me regale you with some harrowing tales of my own.

The Tragic Copier Incident of 2001

There were ten of us on staff, furiously working in the copy room, desperately trying to make enough copies of the budget report for the end of the fiscal year. We were racing against the clock, our backs against the wall, the deadline looming only a few hours away.

Then tragedy struck. Jason loaded a defective ream of bonded paper in the intake tray. He forgot to do a safety check. The edges were ragged. Soon Tim and Scott went down with massive paper cuts. We all started to get hit. Our anguished cries echoed down the hall and into the break room, alerting some of our colleagues, who came running once they finished their coffee and cinnamon buns.

But it was too late. We lost three men that day. Good men. I held Jason in my arms as he breathed his last breath. His dying words haunt me to this day:

“We forgot…to collate.”

December 2004: The Great Floor Wax Debacle

The custodial staff was waxing the floor in the reception area. Our company uses those yellow caution signs that are printed in both English and Spanish. You’ve probably seen them.

Unfortunately, the two custodians could read neither language. They were, in fact, Canadian. And who the heck knows what language those people speak?

In any event, they didn’t know what the signs said, and so they never put them out. And thus the stage was set for calamity.

Tammy went down first, landing on her side with a sickening crack as her hip fractured in several places. Laura attempted to rush to her aid, only to slide across the slick surface like a hockey puck, slamming into the far wall head first and scattering her teeth like Chiclets across the glossy tile. I attempted to restrain Braden as he ran down the hall toward them, but he was wearing his breakaway shirt that day. “No, you fool!” I screamed as I admired the old world craftsmanship of his pink Oxford shirt, which now was little more than a metrosexual rag in my hands, “Stay back!” But it was too late. Braden went down too, his feet flying out from under him as he landed on his back, and his neck snapped with a sound not unlike one hand clapping.

Finally, cooler heads prevailed, and using a series of pulleys and ropes and old yogurt containers we pulled the injured to safety. Poor Braden never recovered. He now spends his days in a wheelchair, dribbling oatmeal down his chin and mumbling constantly about how the Monroe Doctrine was a defining moment in the foreign policy of the United States.

My Kingdom for Some Dasani

August 15, 2003 will forever be known by those who were there as the day men wept openly, women barked like dogs, and children were milked like donkeys. I don’t know what any of that means. But that’s exactly the kind of day it was.

For on that day a perfect storm was formed; a storm which changed every soul who was there.

8:47 a.m. The air conditioning system fails. Indoor temperatures climb rapidly in the sweltering August heat.

9:52 a.m. The water cooler runs out. All the bottles are empty. The bottled water truck is three days overdue.

10:24 a.m. Every single employee, to a man, wishes that it was Hawaiian Shirt Friday instead of Winter Parka and Thermal Underwear Tuesday.

11:57 a.m. People are starting to drink their own urine.
1:34 p.m. Hallucinations are common. Jennifer swears that Mandy has the head of a unicorn. Annie is convinced that giant panda bears are playing musical chairs in the conference room. I suspect that Nazi frogmen are shadowing me when I go to the restroom.

2:46 p.m. People are starting to drink each other’s urine.

3:46 p.m. Current count has us at 4 dead, 11 suffering from heatstroke, and 2 who have really developed a taste for urine

4:45 p.m. Stephen becomes the hero of the day when he realizes that we can just walk out of the building and go down to the convenience store and buy all the water we want. We erect a loving tribute to him out of the fallen bodies of our comrades.

In Conclusion

So don’t call me a namby-pamby sissy boy until you’ve walked a mile in my shoes, bucko. I’ve seen things that haunt my dreams. I have been to the precipice. I have stared Death square in the face until I lost control of my bowels. And then Death lost control of his bowels. Boy oh boy, that was a long day.

Thanks for reading.