Dear Business Analyst Coworker,

I was going through my emails, trying to clear out some old junk I no longer needed and filing things I wanted to keep in a more organized fashion. I’m a bit of an electronic pack rat, so this is something of an undertaking. Anyhow, I came across an email from you that said:

Uh … please be late to every meeting so I can get to read stuff like this more often!

Reading the full chain brought me to a story I had nearly forgotten about, and one that I’m particularly proud of. Thanks to you, I’m going to share it with the World.

Love,

Elijah

The following tale was written on April 6th, 2011. I had missed a conference call the previous day for no other reason than I simply forgot about it. Feeling sheepish about this I offered to make up a wild excuse so as to assuage any fears that I had, perhaps, not given the call the priority it deserved. With some bemusement, the other people who were on the call agreed to this idea. Here is the result of that agreement:

It started out like any other lunch break. I walked to the car, fired up the engine, and headed towards my favorite eatery. Things took a twist from there though. As I travelled down the highway I got stuck behind a truck carrying several hundred chickens (being in Southern Indiana, this is not entirely unheard of). Besides the abysmal smell that normally accompanies 130 pounds of live poultry, things were okay. One of my favorite songs was playing on the radio, the sun was shining, and I had successfully raised the windows before I was smothered in down. However, the truck soon hit a fairly large pothole and the resulting shock sent several of the small cages flying in my direction. Now, as you might imagine, being in the driver’s seat of a 2009 Kia Rio travelling at roughly 60 miles per hour while a wood and metal chicken cage is flying at your windshield carrying a very frightened chicken is not a very tenable position. I did what other people in a similar situation might do: I slammed on the brakes while trying to swerve at the same time. Also, I peed a little. If you have ever seen the movie Blues Brothers you’ll remember that travelling at high speeds, slamming on the brakes, and turning the steering wheel violently will usually result in your car suddenly being pointed in the opposite direction. This is what happened to me, and when my eyes caught up with my body I realized there was a fully loaded [REDACTED] trailer barreling down upon me.

I had spent many years in Operations before coming to my current position, a desk job,  and this requires a much more physical type of work. When I worked on Weekend Shift I would be on my feet, lifting boxes, helping Team Members, and trying to control the chaos for upwards of 15 hours a day. When I came home exhausted my wife would tell me that I was working myself to death and, if I wasn’t careful, [REDACTED] was going to be the death of me. Now, it seemed, she was going to finally be right. This thought prompted me to scream very, very loudly and slam on the accelerator while turning the steering wheel violently. Also, I peed a little. Had I turned the wheel to the right I would have continued on pavement and probably would have been okay, save the fact that I needed a fresh pair of pants. However, I turned the wheel to the left and found myself travelling through a freshly plowed field straight towards a very confused farmer (being in Southern Indiana, this is not entirely unheard of). I slammed on the brakes again and my worldview immediately changed by about 90 degrees.

See, the farmer had plowed a bit too early in the season and the heavy rains we had experienced the previous few days had turned large areas of his field into a muddy bog. When I slammed on the brakes my car frame lifted up in the rear, naturally, and the sudden increase in pressure caused  the mud I was barely driving on to collapse completely and inhale my car. So there I was, strapped into the driver’s seat of my car looking out of the windshield and seeing nothing but dirt, wondering what on Earth had just happened to me when the inevitable conclusion to this story occurred. The airbag deployed. Now I was hungry, scared, confused, and  blinded by tears and blood (resulting from the broken nose and slight concussion I had just received). Also, I peed a little. The farmer was kind enough to haul my car out of the mud with his tractor, and after hosing my mud caked vehicle (and myself) down and going to the local Wal-Mart for a fresh pair of pants I returned to work.
And that, ladies and gentlemen, is why I missed the conference call yesterday.