The Circus

This morning I saw a commercial for the Shrine Circus that is coming to town soon. I had a flashback to one of the most embarrassing times I think I ever had. Okay, I have had many, but this one involved the most people.

I worked at a supermarket that was very involved in the community, and when the circus came to town, they would have a big production at the store on a Saturday before the circus came. They had clowns, balloons, discount tickets, a very festive day for everyone.

I was in charge of the front end, all of the cashiers, baggers, and customer service. I was in a booth, and would answer the phones, cash checks, and oversee all of the goings on in the front of the store.

It was super busy this particular Saturday, and the checkout lanes were packed with people. The clowns were making things out of balloons and giving them to the children. One clown had come over to my booth to the side door and had one of those balloon animals. I was talking to him about how he made them and he was in the process of showing me how to do one, when the telephone rang. I answered the phone, and paged a department over the public address system, but was so enthralled with how to make this balloon thing, that I had walked back to the clown, with the phone in my hand, not remembering that the public address button was still pushed. As he twisted the balloon, and was explaining, I finally understood how he got the balloon to look the way it did I said: "Oh, you mean like this?" Since the public address was on, and the phone was down by my side, what everyone heard was an ever so soft, kind of sexy sounding "oh, you mean like this?" The ENTIRE store heard it!

The front end of the store came to a screeching halt. Baggers stopped bagging, checkers stopped checking, customers stopped writing checks, and clowns stopped clowning, and all eyes looked up to ME. You could hear a pin drop. And then roars of laughter.

The phone rings, and it's the manager from his office in the back of the store, trying to control his laughter enough to ask me what in the heck was going on. I tried as hard as I could to explain, but he was laughing so hard, I don't think it really mattered.

I think it took me the better part of the rest of the day for color to come back to my face, and to be sure, from that point on, always checked the phone to make sure the public address button wasn't still on.