I know I'm doomed as soon as I walk into the meeting and see the guy with the briefcase.
I have to admit up front that I'm not very good at meetings in the first place and guest speakers usually mean trouble, particularly if they have briefcases. Briefcase guys are usually lawyers or accountants and their presence in a meeting implies an expectation that things will proceed with logic and dignity-two qualities I conspicuously lack.
It gets worse. Staff meetings tend to be challenging at the best of times, but it's late in the afternoon. My blood sugar is low. The room is warm. The room is crowded with people breathing up my oxygen. Briefcase Boy is, in fact, a lawyer. He's here to brief the staff on legal compliance with state and federal regulations regarding some recent changes in federal administrative policies.
This spells disaster.
You see, I fall asleep at the drop of a hat. I have fallen asleep standing up! I'm okay as long as I'm actually doing something, but as soon as I have to do any passive listening, my eyes roll back in my head and I start doing that uncomfortable dance that people do as they fall asleep for one to two seconds then catch themselves before they can actually slip off their chair.
I'm particularly anxious to avoid falling asleep in this meeting because (a) I actually need to know some of the stuff that Briefcase Boy is supposed to tell us and (b) I drool and snore a lot-a whole lot-something like a narcoleptic elephant seal. I'd really like to avoid that if at all possible, so I look for a good seat. I actually see one at a table with some friends of mine who motion for me to come join them, so I do.
About two minutes into the lawyer's PowerPoint presentation, I realize that I am done for. He is on his third slide and I find myself thinking about how much sense it would make for the White House to institute a department of pizza and meditation and I can even see the President planting mozzarella trees in the Rose Garden while Condoleezza Rice watches him, seated in the lotus position, when I realize that I haven't had my eyes open for several seconds.
I shake myself awake and look blearily around me. Fortunately, nobody seems to have noticed my micro-siesta, but I know I can't dodge the bullet again.
I look around and see people doodling, but I know that that isn't an answer for me. I'm at least as bad with pens as I am at staying awake. I'm a fidgeter and tend to wiggle a pen back and forth in my fingers during meetings until, inevitably, I lose my grip and accidentally fling it across the room. Knowing this, I deliberately haven't brought a pen with me today, so doodling is out.
Then I see the marbles.
There is a doorstop that is not being used at the moment-an old-fashioned glass jar full of marbles-within arm's reach. Trying to be subtle, I slowly-ever so slowly-bend over and pull the jar to me.
I slowly remove the lid to the jar and place it face down on the table in front of me, then one at a time, start removing marbles from the jar and placing them in the lid.
This is too much for the woman sitting next to me. She leans toward me and whispers in my ear in a motherly kind of way, "You can't eat those," then leans back in her seat.
I shoot her a quizzical look. I'm aware that I have a reputation for not being the sharpest tack in the box, but hopefully people realize that I know enough not to eat glass-not during a meeting, anyway.
I shrug and go back to my marble picking.
I've only put another two or three marbles in my lid before I feel someone tapping my arm. The woman across the table has passed a note around the table to me. Feeling very much like I'm in the Fourth Grade, I hold it underneath the table and open it.
"Be careful," it reads. "Those aren't candy. They are marbles."
Well, that clears one thing up, anyway. Obviously, my coworkers don't think I'm crazy enough to eat marbles on purpose; they just think that I'm too stupid to tell the difference between them and candy.
How gratifying.
I'm distracted by this thought, however, and accidentally drop a marble. It clatters across the table, drops to the floor and bounces across the room with a clack-clack-clack sound, which temporarily stops the lecture.
I'm suddenly the focus of the room, so, under icy glares, I slowly and methodically start removing the marbles from the lid and replacing them in the jar. This pacifies the people and they go back to the lecture.
Later, I apologize to one of my colleagues for disrupting the meeting.
"Hey, I'm sorry about the marble thing."
"That's okay," she says. "You didn't eat any of them, did you?"
