Nobody Knows The Kerfuffle I've Seen, Nobody Knows My Horror!

Yeah. I've been on a sort of theme lately. But each new incident rears its ugly head with such heart-stopping fervor that I cannot let it go. Like today, for instance, just before roll call was taken at the Semi-Weekly Meeting of the Newmentia Lunch Time Think Tank.

We were having leftover catered BBQ from the academic banquet last night. A call came out over the intercom a few minutes before first lunch, alerting the faculty that it would be available. Unlike the leftover Subway party sandwich yesterday, left over from ACT testing, which was announced halfway though first lunch, leaving us approximately 10 minutes to get up off our duffs, digest the food we had already begun consuming for lunch, hoof it over to the teacher workroom, elbow our cronies out of the way, slice through that behemoth, and wolf it down before the bell. Let the record show that Mrs. Hillbilly Mom did not partake of any piece of the Subway.

So today we rushed to the teacher workroom as soon as the lunch bell rang at 10:53. Being the closest classroom to that paradise, Mrs. Hillbilly Mom arrived first. Or so she thought. But there were already two others strapping on the feedbag. Not that it mattered, because there was more than enough food to fill the feedbags of an Avatar-style Hometree full of Cheshire Cats.

I walked in and set down my bottle of water on the small table near the restrooms where sometimes copies are stacked, but where mostly people dump their keys and coats and junk while dashing in to use the facilities. The only thing on this fake-wood shiny brown tabletop today was cups. Two stacks of Styrofoam, maybe 20 ounces, as high as an elephant's eye. They did not take up much room. They were on the door end of the table, and my water bottle was past them, on the Kyocera end.

Others were filling their plates, so I milled around waiting my turn. Just as I had my hand between two buns, my own, in fact, a top and a bottom, to separate it for pulled pork, Jewel stormed in and demanded the spotlight like Auntie Mame.

"Why did I just do this? Whose water bottle do I have? I wasn't thinking, and picked it up like it was mine!" She was holding it not by the middle, the stomach area of a water bottle, but by the head, the business end, the part that goes in the drinker's mouth."

Of course it was mine.

"That's my water bottle. AND YOUR HAVE YOUR HAND ALL OVER THE PART I PUT IN MY MOUTH!"

"Well, I just grabbed it without thinking. Here. You can have it back."

Of course I had to walk over and get it, giving up my place in the food line.

"I can't believe you picked it up like that."

"Oh, c'mon Mrs. Hillbilly Mom! It was an accident." My cousin Tomato Squirter is not good at playing along, unless SHE is the one being affronted by Jewel's actions.

"I know it was an accident. But don't you watch Seinfeld?"

The chuckles of several plate-fillers led me to believe they did.

"How do I know what she's going to do next? She might go in my room on accident, and rub my keyboard all over her heinie!"

And with that mental image, we traipsed out to the lunch table to begin our discourse on the preponderance of lawsuits in these modern times.

Let the record show that Mrs. Hillbilly Mom did not choose the topic.