You know those moments when you say something, but even as the words are still leaving your mouth you realise the mistake you're making, but you carry on anyway? Be it mentioning how legless you got to a person in a wheelchair, or how you're more of a boob man to a hot young lady with aspirins-on-an-ironing-board, you can't help finishing the sentence and making a bad situation exponentially worse.
I did that at the airport the other day.
Long story short, my hand luggage was full of network equipment. We didn't have time to post it to Dublin so I filled my bag with a firewall, plugs and enough cables to sink a moderately-sized fishing vessel. The bag went through the scanner and was unsurprisingly put in a red box for further analysis.
I half expected this so played the waiting game, then two friendly ladies took me to one side and explained that they'd have to swab the bag and its contents to ensure I wasn't Robert Reid. "No problem" says I and they cracked on.
Given the amount of stuff to check it was taking a while, and it got to a stage where nothing was said for a while. Usually this isn't an issue, but when you're in this situation, it somehow feels like not saying something is worse than actually saying something. So I piped up. And I wish I hadn't, because I said:
"I'm only bringing this over as a favour to somebody"
Oh, well done, jackass. They'll love that. Why don't you go the whole hog and shout "It's a motherchuffing BOMB, sister"?
Nothing was said for a few seconds, then she casually mentioned it and I had to quickly (and expertly, it has to be said) backtrack and explain that we should have posted it but we missed the last post so I agreed to take it as a favour for a colleague. It's a good job I'm a staggeringly handsome man or they might have been kicking seven shades of shit out of me behind the wooden partition within seconds.
They didn't, the stuff passed the test and I was on my way in minutes, but God only knows how I got away with that one. Next time I'll swim across.
No comments:
Post a Comment