This is why my seventy year old aunt always tells me to speak before I think. Wait. Strike that....reverse it....
It was a few years ago when I was working at PUMA North America up in Westford, MA. I was interning in PR and not nearly athletic enough to be on the pay roll at such a place. They used to go out and play soccer during lunch. I mean....it was July. Kind of sweaty no?
Anyway so we had an event at the Cyclorama in the South End. It was to showcase the new PUMA spring line. Or fall line. I don't remember. But it was really hot and I had to drive from Norton to Westford to Boston to help set up. I arrived around noon and my first task was to help a really hot guy blow up balloons. He and I got to talking and he was just so good looking. One of those guys who's so cute and nice that you feel like if you get any closer to him you'll spontaneously combust. He told me that he's from Rhode Island and that he writes poetry and did I want to read some. It was either blow up balloons or read this hot guys poetry.
"Oooh I'd loooooove to read your poetry," I purred. I was batting my eye lashes and setting my lips into a pouty mouth. Who was I??
We talked a little bit more and I asked him what he was up to for the rest of the summer and he was kind of vague. Well to make a long story longer I was chatting with Randy from the Real World San Diego.
H
O
T
!
Well at the time he wasn't Randy from the Real World San Diego. At the time he was just the hot dude helping me blow up balloons. Anyway so the day progressed. It was hot as balls. As I was just about to start tying the balloons I had just filled with helium to the sneakers that were being showcased my boss waved me over to her. She was standing with a stick bug that took on the persona of a model and said, "I need you to run to a store and buy towels."
"Um."
"We need towels for the models. They are going to be running on the treadmills for the entire event and they'll need to wipe the sweat off."
I was trying to calculate the amount of time that they would be on the treadmills. The event was about three hours long soooo times that by...umm...errr......oh never mind.
"Ok. I'll run to Macy's in Down Town Crossing."
I was off. In the middle of July I waited on the steaming sidewalk to hail a cab. Brutal. I finally poured myself into Macy's and picked up the first expensive looking towels I could get my hands on. I hoofed it to the register where there was a semi line. Grrrr....The woman in front of me walked up to get rung in and immediately she started to haggle with the man at the register about the price of her frying pans. Oh this is so annoying. I had the classic inward battle with myself: do I deal with it and listen to this woman in front of me, Chinatown's finest, go on and on about how Macy's is trying to cheat her out of $2.00 or do I try to look around for another register where I may have to wait on line for another half hour?
I decided to stick it out.
This woman went on for a legit ten minutes. I was starting to sweat again. It's a good thing I had the towels to dry myself off. Finally I was next. I paid and was on my way in less than sixty seconds.
I arrived back at the event where my boss asked what took me so long. "Oh! You will never believe this Chinese woman who was in front of me. She went OOOOOOOOOOOON and OOOOOOOOOOOOOOON haggling with the cashier. She was SO ANNOYING!!!" My boss just kind of looked at me sideways and dismissed me.
*Fast-forward about three weeks*
I am back at the office in Westford and my boss had been away attending her sister's wedding. "Hey Lisa, come see the pictures from my sister's wedding."
I ambled over to her office, coffee in hand, and she started to click through the photos. Nice wedding. Smiling faces. Pretty dresses. Asian lady in the bridal party. "Wait. Who's that woman?" I pointed to the lady. "Oh. That's my mom."
F.U.C.K.
"Oh....Wait are you adopted?" Why? Why? Why would I ask that?
"No. My mother is Chinese and my father is white."
"Uuuh....oh..." Shitshitshitshitshitshit.
I looked down at her all sideways like and she was looking at me with a half smile on her face. My boss was many things. Stupid she was not. I know she remembered that conversation from three weeks earlier when I went on about that woman as I flailed the model's cotton towels about.
It was one of those things that we knew went down but both decided not to acknowledge. You know, since it was completely mortifying.