A cautionary tale.

It was a warm Saturday evening and I had to attend the wedding of a young employee from my company. I dressed in my best black cocktail dress and heels and was feeling fairly pleased with myself when Joe, my husband, and I headed over to the festivities.

The reception provided a good chance to “catch up” with some of our staffers. As it began to wind down one of my direct reports – a young guy – took it upon himself to patiently usher me out of the reception hall and out to my car with comments like “well, I guess this thing is over”, “time to get on out of here”.

I noticed that as soon as my car started heading out of the parking lot that my self-appointed escort had high-tailed it back into the building. Hmmm, odd I thought

By the time we reached home I realized that he was hustling “the boss” out so that he could get down to some serious partying. I felt just like Grandma Moses.

Once home I took my cranky self up to get ready for bed as Joe headed down to his man-cave. After shedding my slinky black dress and heels (and still mumbling obscenities under my breath) I headed into the master bath to wash up.

And that’s when my nail broke.

Need I share the murderous invectives that filled the air at this point? I thought not. Once I was able to regain a modicum of self-restraint my logical brain directed me to the new bottle of nail glue in my cabinet. I grabbed the bottle and struggled to open it. The cap was a real challenge – more so than usual. I thought something dropped out when the cap came off – but could find no evidence so I sloughed it off.

I spent the next few minutes – while the glue was drying on my nail – performing a few more of my nighttime ablutions. And then I was ready to depart from the bathroom. Only I couldn’t. The heel of my right foot was glued firmly to the floor tile.

I spent the next twenty minutes frantically trying to extricate myself so my husband would not laugh himself into cardiac arrest when he walked in. To no avail. Pulling my foot away would have resulted in the heel staying behind – not an option. I was unable to reach any potential tools that might help me scrape my foot off of that tile. So I gave up.

My next strategy was to begin yelling to Joe for help. Also to no avail. For about 45 minutes I gave periodic shouts in his general direction. None were heard down two flights and drowned out by his bevy of electronic gadgets – each noisy in its own way. Thank god I hadn’t set myself on fire!

I couldn’t even sit on the side of the tub to rest my weary bones as I waited to be rescued from my own bathroom. Finally I heard Joe’s footsteps on the stairs. I steeled myself for his reaction. Based on the cumulative effect of all of the indignities I had suffered that evening – his very survival would depend on his response – that or he’d have to leave me glued to the floor!

God bless him, he walked in, sized up the situation and headed to the garage for Goo Gone. Within 5 minutes I was a free woman. And life was good again!

And then we both laughed until we cried.

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