Just Another Work Perk

Start your weekend right: Go and read this comic. RaJ - careful...there are evil monkeys about...
When I arrived to volunteer at the annual Big Telethon for children’s diseases, the nice lady informed me that I was on the back table. I cursed my life as I realized that I was one of a handful of “normal” people working the celeb-friendly event.

At my table on the right sat Dee who runs a program involving silly hats that she donates to hospitals. She suffers the effects of long-untreated ADD. Every 3 seconds, she plopped on another hat and ran off to “network” as she informed me each time that she asked me to cover her phones.

On my left sat “the face of LA Realty,” a would-be actor (aka professional extra), and the self-proclaimed “girlfriend of a celebrity who wanted to be here for this amazing cause but asked me to do it instead.” The next table up had the big guns including two actors from the original Day of the Dead and a bevy of rich people.

I have mentioned before that “cool with celebrities” (even Z-listed ones) is not a trait among my virtues. Yet I was feeling happy, funny, and energetic, so I started to joke with Dead Guy. I am pretty funny when I’m happy, so everyone was laughing.

As I joked, I noticed that Wannabe Actor kept looking at me. I was desperately outclassed here with Girlfriend and LA Realty, both of whom reinvent the attractiveness scale because 10 is too mundane. As one of my gifts is the ability to guess my chances with any male in the room based on looks alone, I didn’t believe that Wannabe wanted to flirt, but he kept looking at me.

I turned my limited beauty in his direction. He looked at me. I told a joke. He looked at me. At about this time, I had one of those moments that prove I’m the most secure person on the planet. As he looked at me and I looked at him, I thought, “When was the last time I washed my hair?”

The thought, of course, was ridiculous. I wash my hair every other night because it’s long and would become too fine if I washed it every day, but I panicked. What if I had thought that every night was the ‘other night’? What if it had been weeks since I’d washed my hair? Why couldn’t I remember washing it yesterday?

In all his relative handsomeness, Wannabe kept looking at me. I kept smiling. Then he stood up and walked towards me. I looked up at him, waiting for the most exciting moment of my whole life to unfold.

Wannabe leaned down and whispered, “Your phone’s not on.”

I paused, hoping that my face had not played out any of my inner dialogue and that I had washed my hair at least once this week. Then, in amazingly witty manner, I replied, “Uh…..ha, ha.”

Wannabe went back to flirting with Realty. I dove into my now-ringing phone. As everyone else had to ‘network’ I became the table worker bee. I was also good for a laugh.

So, if any of you read a blog about some actor guy who had the best day of his life talking to two hot chicks and he shares a really funny anecdote about some idiot girl who couldn’t use a phone and doesn’t wash her hair….well, tell him hi. And….ha, ha.