That's Not What I Said

That's Not What I Said

You may have heard the story going around about some trouble that I got myself into last week.  It wasn't much of an event.      But it was a bit embarrassing.

I could put a little spin on it and play the martyr, or victim, or maybe even wax philosophical with righteous indignation, but I won't do that to you.  Instead, let me explain what happened and then you tell me what you think.

I was out Saturday morning, running my errands.  Should have been done and home by noon, but my first stop was the post office, where I stood in line for about an hour and fifteen minutes – all because of two people trying to get packages mailed to somewhere overseas – they didn't speak English well and there wasn't anyone to interpret, so we all waited.  Finally, it looked like they were going to leave and take their packages with them.  Apparently they didn't have enough money. 

I yelled out “How short are they?”

Three guys ahead of me in the line shouted back “About 4 foot 9 and 5 foot 2.”

At which point everyone in the building – about 15 or 20 of us - burst out laughing.  Those poor two people looked around in bewilderment and were clearly uncomfortable.

Finally, the Postmaster held up his hand with all five fingers open, which I took to mean $5.

Again, I looked at those folks, now clearly looking miserable, and dug into my wallet for a five dollar bill.  I'm not usually so spontaneously generous and even though I did not intentionally try to disparage the people themselves, I was was feeling a bit responsible for instigating the situation.

When I held the bill out to them (I didn't want to lose my place in line after all this time), they shrunk back – physically.  This sent a tittering giggle throughout the place. 

Now I was beginning to get that mortified feeling seeping into the pit of my stomach.  You know the one I'm talking about, where you just know that things are only going downhill from here.

One of them dropped a package and they both stooped down at the same time to pick it up and, yep, you guessed it.  They knocked heads.  Hard.  This sent them both to the floor.

This was the epitome of comical nonsense.  There were actually some folks rolling around on the floor in laughter, some were crossing their legs, and others were bending over holding their stomachs.  It was bubbling mayhem in the post office.

To make a long story short, the EMT's came and checked them out, they appeared to be fine and left the building, without their packages.  I left the building without getting my stamps.  The post office was closed for an hour.  Everyone was honking horns as I left the parking lot.  Probably at me.

I decided to get an early lunch just to wind down and get my bearings.  As I walked into the restaurant, guess which two people I saw sitting at a table – I did a 180 to walk out the door.

As I looked over my shoulder I could see that they saw me.  Now they looked angry.  Did another 180 and walked over to their table.  Both shook their fingers at me and asked “Why you make fun of us?”

“That's not what I said.  I only meant to help.  I thought that if all you needed was five more dollars to get your packages mailed, that I could spare that much.  There were a lot of us in line and we were all pretty busy, so I thought I could help move things along.  I'm sorry for the way things turned out.”

“How you like it for us to say you have big foots?  You go now – we not talk to you no more.”

Hmmm . . . must go with the mouth they fit in!