Snot rocket
posted in Old blogger |Like me I’m sure you’ve had some embarrassing moments in your life. Whether that’s being caught out lying in front of all your friends, or your fly being undone whilst trying to chat up a pretty girl, or on a bus home with your under 13s football team trying to get the trainer’s attention and calling him ‘Mum’ just as one of those timely silences falls upon the group. Ooooh, that one still makes me squirm.
Not as much as the one I’m about to tell you about though. I was chosen, from many others, to lead a team of people on a dangerous mission/to do a tedious job. You pick. Anyway, there were 12 men and women on this team. We had to go through a 4 week training regime which included ‘bonding sessions’ (where we got to know each other, not where we sat around using glue a lot), technical training and all manner of other crap.
At first it was pretty painful, especially the guru guy doing the team building stuff. I hate that kind of stuff and he was one of those red-faced enthusiastic chaps who thought it would be great fun for everyone to share their secrets and we had to do games based on trust and tons of other shit. I told a lot of lies about my life. Anyway, we got to the end eventually, all sure of the task that lay ahead, of our own roles and responsibilities to ensure the job went smoothly and full of confidence.
It was down to me to finish it off with a talk to the group. I was a little nervous but I began well and settled into it very quickly. I was inspiring, electrifying, uplifting, stirring and impassioned. The team sat enthralled hanging on my every word. At one point I could have been reciting the Chinese phone book and they’d have lapped it up.
Towards the end I decided to add some feel-good to it so I added a little jocular anecdote. I don’t remember what exactly it was but it had them laughing and it set the mood perfectly. They were serious, determined and motivated but with a smile at the back of it all. I was good at this, damn good.
That was until I sort of laughed myself. You know that one where you kind of snort out your nose a bit? Not a guffaw, nothing chortley or cackley and certainly nothing LOLy coz LOL is for cunts. So I snorted my little snorty laugh and out came a huge snot rocket like you see professional footballers blowing out of their noses during a game. They hold one nostril then shoot a rocket of snot out onto the pitch.
That’s what it was like except it didn’t shoot out. It just hung there. It was like an alien tail of snot dangling from my nose. A cat fetus of mucus. I had two choices. Shoot it all the way out or quickly wipe it away with my sleeve. However, I was in a bit of a panic seeing all the credibility I had worked so hard to build disappear in one fell swoop. I sniffed and the whole thing went right back up my nose again. So not only had I stood in front of my team with a snot rocket suspended from my nose they had witnessed a reverse snot rocketing.
Sincerely I wanted the ground underneath me to open up and swallow me. Naturally, being the professional type of person that I am I carried on, making no mention of the incident which haunts me to this day. I stayed with the team until the dangerous mission/tedious job was complete then I quit. And moved house. And changed my name. And phone number. And had my fingerprints burned off. It was that embarrassing.
Now, whenever I have to speak in public, I make sure I blow my nose beforehand. I also have a poo but that’s another story altogether.
