VECS

[by popular demand and without further ado, I present to you a parable about what NOT to do with compressed air]

Picture two guys and a girl having a conversation. The guy standing across from the girl happens to be holding a can of compressed air, as he had been recently blowing some dust around ("cleaning the servers" as he calls it). While holding the can of air, and simultaneously conversing with the girl, he developed an apparent nervous twitch and squeezed the trigger on the air for just a moment. I noticed that the air nozzle was (hopefully unintentionally) aimed almost directly at the girl's upper mid-section, if you know what I mean, and she was wearing a somewhat low-cut, slightly loose, v-neck type blouse. Not that I pay attention to such things.

Well, as you might guess, the airflow created some... movement... of the blouse (don't worry, there was no exposure... not that I was looking for it), and as I realized what had happened, I tried to signal to the guy to get him to stop (without the girl noticing as to save all from undue embarrassment), as I didn't think he noticed what he was doing with the air as he conversed.

The guy in question happens to never pay attention to me in general, much less when I speak directly to him, so of course he failed to notice my subtle hints about his potentially embarrassing air assault. So he continued to converse, unphased. And, to my surprise and I guess empathetic embarrassment, he continued to blow his air onto the cleavage. AT LEAST another four times. AND, following each of these air bursts, the girl would engage in a corrective blouse adjustment, as though she were aware of the guy's faux pas. In fact, it looked to me at the time as though she were fully aware of the situation, but just not verbalizing any discomfort, perhaps in order to avoid embarrassment.

Well, upon the conclusion of our conversation, the three of us went our separate ways, going about the business of our days. Things would have been just fine had they been left alone right there.

Maybe an hour later, the aformentioned guy, myself, and three other guys all head to lunch. During lunch, the aformentioned girl becomes the topic of conversation, which reminds me about the nearly disastrous situation a short while before. So, I mention to the previously air-wielding guy what I observed him doing to the girl, and I asked if he realized the danger upon which he dared tread.

As suspected, he did not realize he was blowing air upon the girl inappropriately. And by this point, pretty much everyone at the table was laughing about the scenario I had described. It was a pretty funny moment in retrospect. But little did I know at that lunch, it was not over.

Personally, I would have been fine with the story ending right there. But, thanks to one of the other guys at the lunch table (we'll call him "the traitor" to eliminate confusion), the adventure would continue to escalate.

Apparently, some time after we got back from lunch, "the traitor" approached the girl from the beginning of our story, and he says to her something to the effect of "hey, I hear [the guy] was blowing air on your chest and making your blouse fly open."

[insert mayhem here]

Now, I'm actually reasonably certain the traitor didn't say those precise words, but considering I would have rather the story ended without him stepping outside the circle of trust to divulge the lunch-time conversation to the girl (who was better off without this information), it makes me feel better to imagine that he embarrassed himself in such a way. And since I was not there when he did this, I shall enjoy my moment of poetic license.

Well, as mentioned, the guy did not notice he was blowing air at the girl's cleavage, causing her blouse to flap slightly. It also turns out that the girl, we learned, didn't noticed she was being blown upon, and that the adjusting of her blouse was as habitual as the guy's squeezing of the air trigger to involuntarily incite said blouse. So, this whole funky situation was pretty much almost entirely a figment of my imagination gone wild. I do realize that had I kept my mouth shut to begin with, none of this would have followed. Which is why I even mentioned the incident in yesterday's blog, because it was the icing on my day of poor communication management.

Did you think the story was over?


Not quite, there's still the injury part.


You see, sometime after the traitor chopped down the trust tree with smiling glee, I confronted him about that big giant mouth of his. I advised that he keep his mouth entirely shut from then on out, never to be heard from again, because the conversation he divulged was never intended for broader consumption. So, of course, as know-it-all guys, we subsequently engaged in idle banter about whose fault it was to begin with, and we were being entirely too loud about it.

[re-enter cleavage girl]

The girl could apparently hear us across the hall bantering about who's mouth was bigger and needed to remain the most shut, so she came over to let us know that none of it was really a big deal (even though I was never unembarrassed about any of it). Right about then, the guy of previous fame re-entered the story, following right behind the girl as she entered the room to advise us, essentially, to shut our equally big mouths.

But, being the stupid guys that we are, we kept on (and on) about it, likely driving the girl to frustration, until she finally burst out (verbally of course)...

"They're just boobs, everybody has seen them"

And that, my friends, is pretty much a direct quote.


So, as if on cue, Mr. Air-can himself raised his hand as though summoning a waiter -- index finger pointed up, one eyebrow raised oh so slightly -- as he quite idiodically replied, "um, I haven't," in response to the girl's proclamation of self-exposure.

[insert further mayhem]

This would be the part involving injury. The girl wound-up good and smacked the guy square across the back, in a manner which I'm certain all in the near vicinity could hear. While the guy didn't physically show us the magnitude of his injury, he expressed (often) that it was quite sore and probably would leave a mark. And he was wondering how on earth was he going to explain that to his wife.



So there you have it. I told you it was no big deal. Just caused me some measurable embarrassment. But I hope some of you can learn at least a little something from my mistakes.