I’m glad there isn’t a law against Bad Puns in Cyber Space, or this blog would have been shut down a long time ago.
The mishap pictured above just can’t pass without comment, especially because it provided a perfect little moment of hilarity in the midst of one of my most hectic days in recent memory. I was rushing all day long . . . three interviews at the station, a rehearsal for state solo and ensemble contest down at Tremper 11:30- 12:45 . . . Kathy’s concert at Schulte Elementary School at 1:30 (which I’ll blog about tomorrow) . . . then back to back rehearsals and lessons at Carthage at 2:45, 3:30, 4:15 and 5:00, at which point I flew home just in time for a 5:45 rehearsal for solo and ensemble, another at 6:00 . . . then back to Schulte for the evening concert at 630. . . then off to church for 7:30 choir practice. . . and back home in time for a 9:00 rehearsal with yet another state contestant who ended up leaving the piano accompaniment back home, which gave me a blest thirty minute break during which I pretty much sat staring into space in a stupor until her return at 930. She just walked out the door at 9:57 p.m. Believe it or not, Kathy’s day was probably even more stressful than mine, thanks to her school concert and all which that entails. (All I had to do was show up and play piano for it. She had to make it all happen.) So she’s already in bed, having taken two Simply Sleep – and I hope to be right beside her in a minute or two.
Needless to say, it was one of those days where incidental matters like eating or going to the bathroom were dispatched in rather harried, frantic fashion. . . which helps explain this little mishap in the men’s room right down the hall from my Carthage studio. I’m actually not quite sure how it happened- I think I may have tried to answer my cell phone while otherwise engaged . . . or else I just stood up a little too exuberantly and sent the contents of my shirt pocket flying. Somehow, I just seem to find a way to do these things. Anyway, one way or another, I ended up with a pen in the toilet. . . and I was tempted to just leave it there as an unexpected bonus for the next person to find, until I realized that the pen is emblazoned with the letters WGTD on it. It might as well say “Greg Berg is a klutz,” so obvious was it that it belonged to me. I couldn’t very well leave it there, so I fished it out by hand, but not before I had whipped out my omnipresent camera in order to snap a picture and immortalize the moment. I then exited the stall only to realize that I wasn’t alone – two freshman members of the wind ensemble were washing their hands. I tried to be nonchalant, hoping they hadn’t noticed me exiting the stall with camera in hand. (I don’t want to think about what that would have looked like to them.)
This vintage Greg Berg moment reminded me of a somewhat similar mishap which occurred a couple of years ago in a restroom at Gateway right down the hall from the radio studio. I was about to exit the building and head off to Carthage when I realized that I needed to make a quick pit stop. For some reason, I had a pile of papers and books in my arms – no bag or backpack that day – but I was in such a hurry that I decided not to take a moment and set my stuff down on the restroom counter, but just walked up to the urinal and decided to do my business with my arms still full of stuff. The first half of the operation actually went fine, but it was in the act of zipping up that something shifted and the next thing I know I have three books and a pile of papers out of my arms and in the urinal itself. . . the urinal which I have just used and not yet flushed. Ewwww! And in that moment, oddly enough, the first thing I thought was “boy, I have a feeling that this has never happened to Michael,” referring to an extremely organized and fastidious music faculty colleague of mine (now departed) who never seemed to have a single hair out of place. Come to think of it, I’m pretty sure this hasn’t happened to any of my faculty colleagues, although I can think of one or two who embody the whole absent-minded, disheveled professor thing even more than I do.
Anyway, enough of this . . . I promise to return to weightier matters such as World Peace or the Meaning of Music from here on out.