10 Reasons Why This Photo Triggers My Spidey Sense

1. It has members of my family in it and I don’t know what they’re doing.

  This instantly puts me on high alert. Knowing how some of my family members have a natural instinct to do things they probably shouldn’t, this document could easily become evidence in some sort of trial. Should I instantly destroy it and pretend like I didn’t just find it in this old scrapbook? At the very least, I should flip it over and see if there’s a date scribbled on the back so I can make sure I have an airtight alibi, even if I have to pay someone to make that happen.

2. There’s no date on the back.

  We’re all in trouble. I can’t possibly develop an alibi that would cover a whole time period that, judging by the estimated ages of the participants, runs roughly from the early to mid 80’s. But at least I was in college then, so maybe I can find some old fraternity brothers that can swear I was drunk in the frat house for two solid years and didn’t have the strength to get into any further mischief. Which is sort of true but also a complete lie. I still managed to do things I shouldn’t, despite heavy round of serious beer-bonging. Shhhh. Don’t ask, don’t tell.

3. My mother apparently raised a child that I didn’t know about.

  I recognize my youngest sister and youngest brother (fore and aft, with my Mom right behind fore). But notice the set of legs in the third position. There wasn’t another child in that chronological segment of the child-production assembly line, yet those cryptic legs seem to match the general age of the two known siblings. Interesting. Mommy, did you have a hobby that we didn’t about?

4. Of course, the elephant in the room is the elephant.

  What the hell? Where did they find this thing? I mean, we had a zoo in my hometown, but I sure don’t remember that place having elephants that you could climb your ass on and smile for a camera. Which means this staff-reduced version of my family had to travel somewhere in order for this paparazzi session to take place. I’m pretty sure it wasn’t India, because we didn’t have that kind of money, and I don’t see any members of Duran Duran in the background making a music video. On the flip side, I didn’t know about the extra brother, so I’ve obviously missed a few memos.

5. Speaking of the background, why does it look like some type of archeological dig site?

  Was somebody looking for yet another buried king in Egypt? Are there still more to find? Then again, we seem to have an awfully large amount of trees for this to be an Egyptian locale. No offense to the fine people of Egypt, but I don’t remember any Egyptian descriptions containing passages like “we looked out upon the vast forests of our land, dripping with moisture and heavy fruit, and we smiled, knowing that those crappy upstart rainforests of South America (we had kings before you had people!) could not begin to compete with our arboreal treasures.”

6. Those horrid brightly-colored tube socks.

  Everyone wore them at the time. Why did we do that?

7. The dramatically asexual attendant to the right.

  What is she looking at? Would it have killed him to look at the camera? And why does she seem to have more badges that necessary? Did he do something extraordinary at some point? Her cap is kind of jaunty, but he loses points for the poorly-tucked shirt. And she’s wearing cryptic sunglasses when no one else is, so he must have secrets. Like her postures seems to speak of a military background, but the fact that he’s now working with elephants indicates that something went wrong somewhere with the career goals.

8. And s/he’s holding a cane in a menacing manner.

  What’s up with that? Is she beating the elephant with it? I’m not really happy about things if he was doing that, but she’s obviously not using it to walk, like maybe he’s suffering from a war injury that still troubles her. Of course, if he was even minimally being unappreciative of the elephant, my sister would have leapt off that royal travelling-platform and kicked his ass, even if she was only six and wearing non-combat jelly shoes that were so popular in that time period.

9. Speaking of that restrictive platform…

  Don’t those menacing bars look like they might be a bit of a hindrance if the elephant decided to, I don’t know, do yoga? Those elephants weigh, like, 400 tons. If girl starts to roll, you’re not going to have enough time to extricate yourself from the Spanish-Inquisition stadium seating before your ass is squashed big-time. And that stupid little cane that your flight attendant is carrying is not going to help you much.

10. And finally, speaking of the elephant.

  Doesn’t the poor thing look tired? I mean, maybe that’s the natural expression, and maybe the elephant doesn’t mind lugging family units with mysterious extra members from one end of the Egyptian excavation site to the other. (Which is, interestingly enough, how I feel when I go to staff meetings.) But do we really know that? Are we caring for the animals of this planet properly? Are you?

  Just something to ponder as you flip through old photographs and think about history and life and responsibility. Cheers.

10 Soul-Damaging Things That Always Happen When I’m Trying To Impress My Boss At A Regional Meeting

1. I hit the failblog when trying to get to the meeting place on time.

  I can leave three days early for the festivities and I still won’t make the starting time. Something random and absurd always happens, like a sanitation strike or a runaway elephant blocking the road. Of course, everybody else hears about the tragedy in plenty of time to take an alternate route, getting there early enough to visit with the rest of the participants and become best friends, which marks me as the lone outcast before I even get there.

2. I can’t gracefully enter the conference room.

Nope, I’ve got to clatter in the door after they’ve already started the opening remarks, proceed to trip over a pocket of air, stagger into the bagel table, nearly upend the sloshing coffee urn, send packets of sweetener skittering across the floor, and then finish with a flourish by losing control of my briefcase at just the right moment that it hits the end of the conference table and bounces back into my gut, knocking the wind out of me. In the ensuing stunned silence, I do not receive any high scores from the Olympic judges.

3. I will lower my ass into the loudest chair known to mankind.

  There can be a whole pack of unoccupied office chairs, shoved over in a corner because people have already gone through them and picked out the good ones. Try as I might to find the most well-behaved of the lot, I will end up selecting the one that squeaks like people have been having career-advancement sex on it since 1972. And as I try to sit perfectly still and not make annoying noises, the height-adjustment lever will snap off and the whole contraption will plummet to the floor so that my knees are above my head.

4. I will be seated too far away from any known electrical outlets.

  And my laptop will have roughly three minutes left on the battery. The laptop that has 47 spreadsheets that I am supposed to share with everyone else or the meeting cannot continue and people have flown from other states for nothing. The unit will fire up long enough to tell me that it is dying. And then it does.

5. I will have a small mental breakdown during Introductions.

  As we go around the table, everyone else will have fascinating job titles, exciting careers that have won them Nobel prizes, and a charming personal anecdote to share that has the crowd showering them with laughter and adoration. When it’s my turn, my suddenly dried-out mouth will barely be able to choke out my name, I’ll be unable to remember the official designation of my current position or who I report to, and my pitiful, meandering, pointless job description will make three people cry about the shame I must be experiencing. Later, one of them will discreetly hand me a check so that I can seek therapy.

6. I will have no idea where my glasses are.

  They will be completely AWOL, despite having worn them mere minutes ago on the drive in. I do my best not to cause even more of a ruckus as I get frustrated and re-check each and every pocket in my briefcase. (Despite my stealth maneuvers, the incessant zipping and unzipping will cause the surrounding people to give me glares indicating that I’ve had far too much coffee and really need to settle down.)

  Just as I give up the search and hope that I can wing my way through the mess, the moderator will ask me to review the slide on the overhead and fully explain how we can resolved Critical Issue #3. I can’t read a word on the screen, never mind the numbers, and I’m not sure if the things in front of the screen are people or potted plants.

7. I will have a life-threatening coughing fit.

  At some point during the proceedings, probably right when the topic is “how your job performance affects your compensation”, I will get one of those inexplicable throat tickles that come out of nowhere. I will stupidly try to remedy the situation with a simple throat-clearing, which quickly escalates into a full-on round of hacking and choking, complete with the horror of uncontrolled spittle flying out of my mouth and across the conference table, landing in parts unknown.

  Naturally, there won’t be a handy bottle of water anywhere around, because they drank all that up waiting for my tardy ass to get there. So the only recourse is to stagger out of the room and collapse in a nearby stairwell because I have no idea where the bathrooms might be, having missed orientation and donuts. No one will bother to check on me for hours, until a surprised janitor bonks me on the head with his mop.

8. I will get caught not paying attention at some point.

  I can spend the entire day listening carefully and taking copious notes, but that one moment when I very briefly wonder if I should get a tattoo of a barcode on the back of my head will be the exact moment that a vice-president asks me for my opinion of what was just stated. (At least I think it’s him, I can’t really see anybody on that side of the room. It might be the janitor, who got a very serious promotion and joined our staff after performing CPR in the stairwell.)

9. I will get something in my crotch.

  This never fails, ever. I always manage to get a shame-inducing stain on my pants at some point during the meeting. And the real kicker is that I never know where this stain comes from. Knowing that I have this issue, I will avoid all provided snacks on the little table, I’ll skip lunch and just read in my car, and I stay away from water fountains (a notorious source of surprise wetness).

  Yet, usually about mid-afternoon, I’ll look down, and right there in my crotch will be some melted chocolate or a splash of salsa or some organic vinaigrette. Two seconds after this discovery, I will be asked to step up to the whiteboard and draw a diagram of the new inventory system. (Try drawing and talking when you’ve got your privates mashed against the wall or hidden behind a briefcase that you clearly don’t need to be carrying. Fun times.)

10. I will not get out of the meeting early.

  All my co-workers get to attend “all-day” meetings that actually end about 2PM, with everybody running off to use their expense accounts at the local bar. I will get that one facilitator who loves her job and can’t wait to solve the entire world’s problems with sticky notes and a flow chart. We will be there way past 5PM, while we debate the merits of four proposals that won’t change a damn thing about how we do business, my laptop continues to be dead and my crotch dries into a crackling crust of obnoxious humiliation. And then my throat starts to tickle…