Searching for a Cure

I have this disease. Its called Foot in Mouth. Its inherited—I happened to have inherited it from my mother, who has a much worse case than me. It can be monitored, and mine is usually kept under control, but every now and then I tend to have an outburst.

Here are a few examples of when my Foot in Mouth disease outbursts strike at the office.

I told my asian boss who has blonde streaks in her hair that I hate it when asian girls dye their hair blonde. I told her that I thought that it was stupid to dye lovely dark thick hair blonde because it will just break and look like you are trying to be something you aren’t. When she said “but I have blonde in my hair” I had to tell her that I didn’t mean her (because I didn’t) I meant when asian girls dye their whole head. I told her that her blonde streaks looked awesome because they were ‘edgy’ (thanks Tyra Banks, next I would have said Fierce!).

I told the following joke: What do you call an epileptic in a pile of leaves? Russell; to a guy who then told me that his father is an epileptic. He wasn’t joking. In all fairness, his joke was better (what do you do when an epileptic is in the bathtub? Throw in your laundry) but for those first 5 seconds, I wanted to die.

After discovering that someone wanted to insure a $20K ring, we all gathered to look at the picture. We were nonplussed. Especially when we discovered that it was yellow gold. We all loudly started exclaiming that we hate yellow gold jewellery, that its tacky etc before one of our new coworkers pops up, covered in yellow gold jewellery. Rings on each finger, chains, earrings. I said that yellow gold just didn’t work with my complexion. I don’t know if she bought it.

My disease crosses media boundaries as well. An outburst has an equal chance of popping up in verbal conversation or in electronic media. For example, we have an office messenger. And we all abuse it. But in the past I have meant to use it to talk about what a dumbass Veronica is and in my haste to make judgmental comments to someone like Anna (who will appreciate them) I will click on Veronica. And tell Veronica what a dips**t Veronica is. And then Veronica will get confused. And I will LOL because…I have nothing better to say.

Currently there is no cure. I can’t change it, its gotten a lot better as I have gotten older and I hope that one day, with the continued support of communities around the world, a cure will be found. So please, won’t you give today?