Whoops

OK, imagine, you are on a first date, better yet a blind date! I seriously hope everyone who reads this has had or will have the opportunity at at least one blind date in their lives. It's a right of passage, you haven't really lived until you have been on a blind date.

This post actually has nothing to do with blind dates although my friend Nycole has had her fair share of them and I keep trying to get her to write a book about all her dating experiences. It would be a "pee-your-pants-laughing-so-hard" kind of book.

So you are on this date, it's typical, awkward, especially at the beginning as you try to get to know one another. After you have exhausted all the regular questions:

-What are you studying?

-Where do you work?

-How many siblings do you have?

-If you could travel anywhere in the world, where would it be?

The salads haven't even come out yet so you move on to the next round of questions. Here it comes...

-What is your most embarrassing moment??

Now I don't get embarrassed easily and maybe what others think are embarrassing I just don't, so I never had a great answer for this question. Until one day I pretty much had a horrifying experience and I thought to myself after it all "you know what, that was pretty embarrassing." 

  

It was my Senior year. I was 17 years old. I was getting ready to go to college and had joined this club called PLT (peer leadership team) It was a service club. It was a blast, a lot of my friends were in the club, and we got to do some really great things. One thing in particular was that we would go to local Elementary schools and teach the kids who were behind in their classes how to read. One day we were at a training for this program which was an all day thing. We had just had lunch and returned to the room where we were all mingling before the next series of trainings began. I was in a small group of girls chatting when I looked over at one of my buddies, Joe Bishop (the name has been changed to protect the innocent).

Joe is a really nice guy. Everybody likes Joe, he was our senior class president. Another nice thing about Joe is that he is a pretty unconventional guy. He was also the founder / president of the unicycle club and is just a funny, quirky guy.

As I looked over at Joe he had a long rope like thing hanging out of his pocket, intentional, like those guys that have the chains hanging off their belts.

When I saw it I immediately thought of boondoggle.

You remember boondoggle, right? Super cool in 4th grade? Long strip of plastic you can get in any color imaginable that you make into killer key chains (Napoleon Dynamite anyone?)

Oh good, now that you remember I won't look as stupid as I finish this story.

Where was I, oh yes, boondoggle hanging out of his pocket. (he is a pretty unique guy, not unbelievable for him to really have boondoggle hanging out of his pocket.) But not only was it boondoggle it was GLOW IN THE DARK boondoggle. How did I know? Glow in the dark stuff is always the same color, as indicated in the picture above.

So what do I do? In mid conversation I yell out "BOONDOGGLE!!!!" and I lunge to grab hold of the plastic cord. Very unfortunate Joe happened to be turning away from me at the same moment I grabbed hold of the hoop. It all happened so quickly and I was having a hard time processing why I heard a yelp of pain as the boondoggle released from the pocket and remained clutched in my hand.

As it was taking years for everything to click in my brain, one teeny tiny detail about Joe shot to the forefront of my mind making me gasp audibly.

Joe Bishop has diabetes.

Do you know what that means?

Oh yes it does, it means I ripped poor Joe's insulin pump out of his stomach... all in the name of boondoggle.

With a shaky hand I gave back his insulin pump and in a hushed voice I said "oh.... I am so sorry."

In response Joe said: "I need this insulin, I had a pop at lunch."

Yikes!

After a solid 15 min of watching him poke himself in the stomach he finally got it in and all was well. I don't know what is was like for him, but for me it was utter torture.

I was so horrified I didn't tell anyone what had happened but for the next few days people kept coming up to me saying "So I heard you almost killed our president?"

Word spread like wildfire and even months later we could be in a group of people and if there was a lull in the conversation somebody would just say "boondoggle" and everyone would crack up (including Joe).

The moral to this story:

Your mom's not kidding when she says keep your hands to yourself.