Parfait

I've never been very coordinated. I don't know if it's my clown-sized feet or the fact that my legs are abnormally long (two details which make me think that, should I ever be shipwrecked, I could find a sizable piece of driftwood, cut off my legs, and use my oar-sized feet to row myself to safety).

From grade school games of kickball to high school requisite dance classes, I've always been the one to demonstrate his complete inability to be graceful. The latest in my ever-growing list of examples comes from a experience I had while working.

It was time for my lunch and so I opted for a drink and one of the fruit and yogurt parfaits sold at the little snack bar. After purchasing my items I headed upstairs, where our break room is. In less than five minutes, I would no longer be wearing my shirt, and I would have nothing to eat besides the basket of free Jolly Ranchers sitting next to the communal toaster oven.

As I made my way upstairs, I was moving quickly, practically skipping up the stairs, when my foot caught the lip of one of the steps. As I reached out for the railing to catch myself with the three available fingers holding my parfait, the two holding the little plastic cup squeezed, sending yogurt and mixed berries all over my shirt and face and covering the stairwell in a sticky red, white, and purple mess.

I stood there for a moment after it happened, wishing and hoping that, somehow, this was all a huge misunderstanding, as if I were dreaming or I'd somehow ingested some bad mushrooms and was now hallucinating one of the most mortifying experiences of my life. Unfortunately, as the yogurt dripped down my face in fat little globules, I realized that this was no dream. No bad shroom trip.

My first instinct was to try and cover up what had happened. I'd been alone in the stairwell, and so I thought that if I could just find some paper towels, everything might be fine. But as I searched my bosses' offices, I could find nothing. And so I had to swallow my pride and walk into the break room, where three of my coworkers were sitting.

It took them a second to realize that, despite my usual shabby appearance, I looked a little more shabby today, seeing as I was wearing a food item like one of those rejuvenating masks often seen on women in television shows. Their reactions ran the gamut from compassionate ("Oh no! What happened?") to crushing (a bark of laughter), and finally to the outright cruel (the camera shutter sounds of a cell phone taking pictures).

I cleaned myself off, and thanks to the ingenious invention of the undershirt was able to go downstairs, past the scene by the stairs that looked like a deleted clip from a homemade horror movie, and go buy another shirt for work.

So, I am clumsy. I am uncoordinated. I am never eating one of those damned parfaits again.