Want a double entendre? Here, let me give you one!
I work in an office. It’s a fairly typical, open plan office for a modern, large business. It’s dull, fine, but dull. I am also commonly sleep deprived as is par for the course as the dad of a two year old. Conversation varies wildly from Fantasy Football leagues to how each employee’s favourite football team performed at the weekend to what the latest gossip is in the football transfer market etc… There are also occasional forays into parenting styles, global socio-economic issues, commodity/stock price rises and falls, grandiose developments in people’s love-lives (both actual real life and TV characters) and even, occasionally, the sign of genuine emotion. But mostly it’s just football.
However, this summer, a lull in football between the World Cup and the start of the Premier League coupled with unusually summery British summer weather, combined with the fact that I apparently still have the mental age of a teenager, have had unfortunate consequences. (My son must think I’m a proper adult, it’s hysterical! The lessons on fallibility he has coming are going to hit hard!). I can be known to sink to the levels of deliberately misunderstanding an innocent comment as if something overtly sexual has been said. It’s not a trait I’m very proud of; although I am very good at it!! I thought I would share just a few of the comments I have failed to rise above in the office in the last few weeks:
- A colleague was trying to choose what pale colour to paint their dining room and blurted this classic: “my ex wanted to paint my downstairs in this cream tone…”
- Another colleague was talking about cycling at the velodrome (we had athletics championships showing on one of the TVs for some reason…) “apparently they take great care to really polish the wood”
- On getting into the lift on our way back from lunch, and on seeing my ‘food container’ a colleague exclaimed: “My, that’s a small lunchbox. You surely can’t keep much in there?!” To which the person coming out of the lift (an, at that time, fairly unknown colleague) blushed, giggled and walked on past us!
When these comments come up, I know I should just rise above them. I wish I was the bigger man, but I find it hard… I don’t need to roll about on the floor laughing, but my friends that know me best will see the slightest raising of an eyebrow, or the hint of a smile cross my lips and know what they’ve said.
I’m not even entirely sure I can blame the sleep deprivation. Not unless I’ve been building up to it for many years before Piglet was born! I can only apologise.