Um, Really?

Since I typically write about job humor, I don't think I've ever discussed the fact that I have an absurd knack for finding myself in strange situations. It's true, and happens far more often than is even reasonable to believe. I'm talking about weird things like finding myself in someone else's bed & breakfast bathroom with a 60ish year old woman who is wearing only a bra. Or the time I went running with a peer and asked her if she had a boyfriend after she has courteously asked me about my husband.  Apparently I was the only one in the world who didn't know she was gay, not that I care, but that whole boyfriend question? Yeah, awkward.  Another time a young woman came to my office (when I worked at a hospital), sharing the woes of her life while trying to leave her baby with me while she went to work. Oh! Then there was the time I was working out and some lady I had never met started exercising beside me. She didn't even introduce herself, but proceeded to tell me that she was recently divorced and that she had put up with a lot of things from that jerk, but as soon as he started looking at their 12-year-old daughter naked she packed up and got out. 

I've decided I must have one of those faces that makes people want to vomit their life's story on me. Just now a visiting nurse stopped in my office to say hello. I've met her one other time for maybe one minute. I made the mistake of asking "how are you?"  Here is her answer...the abridged edition.

"You know, I'm actually really great although I've been really watching my blood pressure because it's been elevated. I'm the only woman in my family not on high blood pressure medication, and I just want to figure out a way to control it without the pharmaceuticals. Hormones might have something to do with it, but thank God I should be over with that soon! I'm on month five of no period, but of course you have to go an entire year before they'll consider you post-menopausal. God, I can't wait.  Back in the 80s I had such terrible PMS, and you know that was before PMS was medically recognized, and when it finally was I felt so validated! Finally I had an answer to why I had tried to kill myself so many times. But that last time when I was pregnant and almost killed my baby, I told God, if you give me a healthy baby I'll never try to kill myself again. But then I got stuck in peri-menopause, which is like PMS only it's worse and lasts longer, so I nearly renigged.  I was only having 4-5 good days out of every month, but thankfully I got sober and that program has been tremendous in helping me cope and now I just can't wait to have the whole hormone mess behind me.  That and losing about 40 pounds just might keep me off the hypertension drugs!"

Yup. I must have one of those faces, alright.