Open Mouth, Insert Foot

About a week or two ago a friend of ours asked my wife to meet her 6 year old daughter as she was getting off the school bus and watch her for a couple of hours. To protect her identity I’ll call her Emma because it’s such a ridiculously popular name that it might as well be ‘Anonymous.’ With apologies to the millions upon millions of you out there who have named your daughter Emma. And yes I realize the irony in me writing that when my firstborn son is named David.

My wife has trouble saying “no” to anyone, a trait that has often worked in my favor, and so she agreed to watch Emma. My boys enjoyed playing with Emma at our house and she even helped my wife bake some cookies. Yes, things were going swimmingly until my wife announced that it was time to take her home.
“Awww, can’t I stay longer?” Emma pleaded.
“No honey, I have too many kids to take care of already,” replied my wife. That’s when it happened. Emma cocked her head to one side with a puzzled look on her face and thought for a second.
“But you only have two children,” said Emma who is from a family of three children, “how hard can that be?”

I am pleased to report that the doctors were able to successfully remove the spatula from Emma’s colon and she has been moved out of intensive care. She is expected to make a speedy recovery, and I’m assured that the emotional scars will heal in time too. Frankly, I think the experience will do wonders for her when she reaches the corporate world. If you openly mocked senior management like that you’d be packing your personal effects into a box within minutes. Maybe not literally within minutes, but you’d be gone just as quickly as senior management could find someone to tell them who you are, what department you’re in and how much they could save by replacing you with an intern or an easy button. (See, that’s how you take shots at senior management; from the brave anonymity of a pseudonym on an internet blog.)