Monday, May 5, 2008

Would you immediately chop off your arm or take your chances?

Something unfortunate happened to me the other day.

A co-worker walked over to my desk and wanted to talk to me about his upcoming wedding. I swiveled around in my twirly chair to face him. He was standing up (looking down at me), I was sitting down (looking up at him). Ok, everyone have a visual?

Right then and there, God pressed the "slow mo" button on life. A foamy chunk of spittle gracefully arced out of my co-worker's mouth and headed straight to my face. Despite my frantic ducking and dodging, there was no escaping this heat seeking missle. It implanted itself in the worst possible place EVER: IN.MY.EYE.

I immediately slapped both hands over my left eye and exclaimed, "YOU SPIT IN MY EYE!!" *sound of chuckles across the trading floor*

OK, NORMAL.

THEN, I said, "Do you have any diseases?" *sound of awkward silence across the trading floor*

NORMAL???

Ok, ok, so I know I'm a bit of a hypochondriac. But I think it's because I grew up in the 80's where my greatest fear was to contract a blood borne disease. Like that nurse who accidentally dropped test tubes of blood plateles on her face and got AIDS. Or the story where a kid was stuck in the arm with a dirty syringe by a maniacal crazy person and died. I replayed this scene many times over and over in my head. If this happened to me, would immediately chop off my arm or take my chances?