Things I Never Mentioned

Have you ever had something embarrassing, sad or just plain stupid happen to you and you don't tell a single person about it? I have two confessions to make right here and now. I'm not sure why I didn't casually mention them as an occurrence before. Maybe it was because when they happened my first emotion was anger, then it turned into "did I really just do that?". It's in the category of when something happens to you or you do something and you wish you could reverse time and prevent it from ever happening.

Both of my incidents involve glass, I guess that says something about me. The first one happened in June 2007 as I was getting ready to go on our family vacation. Our annual vacation takes some preplanning. We like to haul most of our groceries from home. It was a lovely June evening and I was shopping at WinCo. I remember taking my grocery cart out to the car. I started loading the bags in the trunk. I had bought two cases of Thomas Kemper soda pop. I think they were about 6.00 or 7.00 a box. There are the ones in the glass bottles and you get assorted flavors. These cases weren't as big as the ones at Costco.

Well I picked up one case from the cart and somehow it swung out of my hand and came crashing down between my car and the one next to it. I heard the tinkling glass and when I picked up the case, which was fully intact on the outside, soda pop came oozing out the corner.

There I stood in the parking lot with a cardboard box of broken glass and soda dripping on the pavement. I didn't quite know what to do. I wasn't going to go back in and pay for another case, I figured the other one I had would have to do.

So I did what I thought was the best solution and to save face. I took the sticky, glass tinkling, dripping box and put it in the bottom of a shopping cart in the cart station in the parking lot. Bless the store person who found it and cleaned up after me!

The other glass breaking incident I had was earlier this year. I was doing food at a wedding reception at a church I had never been to before. The nice man met me in the parking lot to let me into the building. I parked out back so I could unload the truck into the kitchen. I arrived about 30 minutes before my helpers were to arrive.

At the church you always have to prop the back door open with a chair and take the wheelie cart from the kitchen to the parking lot, load it up and go back into the kitchen. Well this kitchen cart had stacks of plastic trays hanging from the cart. I figured I could use them like shelves.

I had made a trip or two already and was loading up bags and boxes. I had a lovely glass salad bowl which I sat on a tray and then I promptly loaded another tray, slid it in, and you guessed it, knocked the glass bowl off the tray out the other end smashing it down onto the pavement.

That's when you just kind of take a moment, stand there and realize what had just happened and that it totally could have been prevented. And how much I was going to miss that glass salad bowl. Not just for the reception but for my holiday meals at home. Luckily it wasn't an expensive glass bowl, but it just should never have happened.

Then I had to go inside the church, find the maintenance closet, take a broom, dust pan and small garbage can outside and clean up my mess. Luckily it was in the back parking lot and it was all cleaned up before anyone else arrived. Not the most pleasant way to start an afternoon of making petite sandwiches and fruit platters.

I'm fine now. I've moved on. I haven't replaced the glass salad bowl yet and every time I drink soda pop from a glass bottle, I'll remember that June day in the grocery store parking lot.