Greetings gentle readers!

Hope everyone is enjoying a relaxing Labor Day weekend (boy, is *that* an oxymoron)!

Those of you that have been with me for awhile already know that I have a habit of getting myself into erm…situations. Things like, oh I dunno……getting mistaken for furniture, or, say, my rather infamous (outdoor) faceplant, not to be confused with my rather infamous (indoor) faceplant,
or even my exotic overseas oops-I-did-it-again adventure.

Suffice it to say, gentle readers, that I am no stranger to spectacular feats of random uncoordination. Thankfully, I’ve learned over the years to say, watch where I’m going and such, though when I forget (and it *does* happen) I laugh it off and don’t get mortified anymore. Do I get embarrassed? Sure. But I don’t hide in shame. No, I store it all and blog about it later for the amusement of others.

If nothing else, I can give my readers the gift of a head shake, and thinking “Wow. I’ve never done anything *that* stupid!”

Well, those were just a warm-up for the following story, gentle readers. After this one, I was pretty certain my tombstone would end up reading “Here Lies Mary: She Really Did It This Time”

Read on, and you be the judge. This blunder was a little more dangerous than most.

But first, random backup factage!

This story harkens back to my college days. *cough* years ago.

Now, anyone who has ever lived in a dorm-like situation will know exactly what I’m talking about here, but for those of you who haven’t, let me explain:

The dorm is always ridiculously small. This is a rule. As many people per square foot as possible are crammed into said spaces, and expected to get along, cohabitate, and not, say, flip out one day and eat one another, like a few of my gerbils did.

For this reason, every square inch of space needs to play dual or even treble roles. Which is how I came to have a milk crate that was a bookshelf/cupboard/vanity table. I had some permutation of textbooks, cereal, makeup, coffee, and oh, what the hell….perfume. Why not. Why not, indeed.

(funny thing about the perfume, too. It’s the only fragrance I have ever liked, or worn, since the age of 17, when I went on a trip to NYC and encountered some very aggressive sales clerks at Bloomingdales who don’t so much ‘ask’ as ‘spray you as you walk past,’ resulting in me going ‘hey’ (sniff) ‘I actually like one of these’ (sniff, sniff) and unable to decipher it so having to go around the perfume counters until I found it, and it is called, perhaps ironically, (call that foreshadowing) Poison, and even to this day people who know me well say they still think of me whenever they smell it, though I haven’t really worn it since I was pregnant with Puddin Face, since the smell of just about everything made me throw up, and now it just seems a bit strong and I don’t want to bowl her over, though I still like it)

Where was I?

Ah yes…the dorm room.

I should also mention that I love the smell of coffee. I only drink it when I really really feel like I need it, but I do enjoy a cuppa, even though it wreaks havoc on my tummy unless I have it with, like, a huge breakfast, which I’m not inclined to eat as a starving college student, now am I?

Plus I had a tin of my favorite (via a care package from mom)…General Foods International Coffee….I think it was Cafe Vienna. Mmmm.

So, in an effort to tie this all together…..I have a milk crate that holds many things that don’t belong together. One of these items is a tin of Cafe Vienna. Another is my trusty bottle of Poison perfume. One sat on top of the other. I’ll leave it to your imagination which was where.

Fast forward to the last week of school….finals week. I’m up late, cramming for exams (I work best under pressure) and when I wake up I find myself in serious need of that caffeine jolt before I head to my last 3 finals. I heat the water as I shower, and let the steaming mug waft into my nose to wake me as I dry my hair and try to paint enough makeup on to prove myself a youth of the 80s. Yeah, I said it.

I should also mention that when I’m that tired, I have no time for sipping. (not to mention the fact that I never, ever, EVER wait long enough, and the first sip scalds the shit out of my tongue, and I get so annoyed, and then my whole day is shot before its even begun, which can’t be good on finals day) So I wait until the coffee is lukewarm and I chug it and I’m good to go.

And that’s just what I did.

So there I was, during my first essay exam (MAN I don’t miss those!) and suddenly……I started to feel not so good. I was pretty certain it was just my usual ‘coffee-on-an-empty-stomach’ malarky so I wasn’t overly concerned. It sucks, but I can deal.

But then….wait…hang on….no, no this is very much *not* the same. There is all this ominous…..rumbling. And a bit of…can this be right? pain?

Wow. Yeah. Pain it is. Ouch! And the rumbling starts getting so loud others next to me are glancing over like ‘wtf?’ And on exam day, anything that tears you away from what’s in front of you has to be fairly noteworthy.

I start to get a little bit alarmed.

Then….oh, man…..it feels like someone is almost kinda stabbing my stomach…wtf is this now? I’ve never felt anything like it!

And just as I’m trying to make sense out of this, a sheen of sweat breaks out onto my forehead, I start getting that fluttery feeling, and oh crap……I need to make a mad dash out of the lecture hall so I can go, ya know, ralph.

(which I hate and am a big baby about, by the way)

So I finally grope my way back to class and my prof is looking at me questioningly….I give him a feeble thumbs-up and sit back down. And try to write. As I’m thinking ‘how the heck did I get so sick so fast? I haven’t even had anything except that stupid coffee!’ And I’m really not that stressy about exams….I was fairly confident I knew my stuff. Granted, it is 1/4 of my grade and all, but I’ve never done poorly on exams. I just need to concentr…..

Ut oh, there it goes again….that knife-like pain…wtf is going ON?…..and I have to dash down the hall again. And I stumble back again. And I have to run again. And by this time I’m more than a little bit concerned.

My prof approaches me on my third trip back and takes one look at me and tells me I need to go lie down. Something about me looking rather green. (and let’s face it, it must have been pretty bad to notice underneath all that makeup)

“What about my grade?” I ask him. He is nice enough to tell me he will give me as a final what I had going into the exam (which was a solid B) and I said fair enough and he told me to take care of myself in a ‘please-don’t-sue-the-school-for-whatever-is-wrong-with-you’ sort of way.

I made my way back to my dorm and collapsed. At least, ya know, until I had to barf again. I even made it to my other exams….long enough for the profs there to take one look at me and give me the same verdict….to give me the grades I currently had. So I went back to my room and tried to figure out why I could possibly be dying.

Suddenly, after rinsing my mouth for the 100th time, I caught a glimpse of my earlier coffee mug….still sitting on the counter.

‘We meet again’ I said to my adversary. I just couldn’t figure it out.

Suddenly, a lightbulb went off. I went into my bedroom and walked over to the crate. And the perfume bottle sitting on top of the plastic cover of the coffee tin. I suddenly recalled the perfume bottle being on its side that morning when I went to get the coffee, when I had one of my ‘scene-of-the-crime’ re-enactment moments.

With growing dread, I picked up the tin……and found a teeny tiny hairline crack in the plastic cover of the tin. Right on the seam, near the edge, where it was barely visible.

I opened the tin. Oh. My. Gawd. How could I *not* notice this morning that it was all clumpy?

I took a cautious sniff.

WOW. My coffee smelled very much like…..say it with me now….POISON. And, since I didn’t immediately collapse from the absurdity of it all, I was able to reflect that I must have been really, really tired to not have noticed not only the granular quality of my coffee, but the perfumy-aroma coming from my steaming mug (not to mention a rather distinct flavor which only became apparent when I was experiencing it, say, the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th times around)

What can I say, gentle readers?

I’m nothing if not a cautionary tale!

The good news is, Poison perfume in that concentration was not lethal, and I lived to tell the tale. And now I have yet one more thing to warn Puddin Face  about when it’s her turn to experience sardine-living:

don’t store your perfume on your coffee. (though something tells me she’s even smart enough already to know that)

Anyone else have any near-Darwin awards they’d care to share?

Thanks for reading and enjoy the holiday (unless, of course, you live overseas, in which case I don’t feel too bad, since you most likely have 5 times more paid vacation than we do)

This entry was posted on Sunday, September 2nd, 2007 at 11:13 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.