Whoops!

Today at work I was working through some problems with our subcontractors at BYU (fun to have contracts with my grad-school advisor), and I mentioned one of the big gaps in the research to date.  This was a realm where we don't really have any theoretical results to back up our practical observations.  I'm all for observations, but unless you can prove it, the observations are ... just observations.

An hour after the phone call, one of the graduate students sent me a paper he had written for a class project that shows some justifications with some theoretical background for me to review, and I printed it and left it on the printer for a few minutes.  The CEO and founder of my company stopped by my desk a few minutes later and asked about this document that had been generated for a class project-- because it had been a derivative work from one of his seminal papers from 1971!  The student cited his sources, but agreed that there wasn't much new or innovative beyond the 1971 paper.  Our CEO asked to keep that copy and wanted to review it.

Here's the good part.  When the student replicated the original work, he hadn't realized that the original author was my company's founder, much less thought that his replica of the work would be snatched off the printer by the originator   He was mortified.  When I told him that his document was under review by "one of the greats" I'm pretty sure he felt like slinking into a crevice somewhere.  He didn't do anything wrong, but he certainly was embarrassed to have overlooked the connection!

Well, we all do embarrassing things sometimes.  Here I will share two old ones, and two new ones, just so you can laugh at me.  Cause that's what embarrassment does for a person--provides joy for others.

Old #1.

Elder Jackson and Elder Landon playing the Nose Harp, Spring 2002, England London Mission.

 My mother has helped me develop many talents.  One of those is playing the nose harp.  I must say I am quite good at it, and my harp has near-perfect pitch and a wonderful kazoo-style buzz.  You can try too!  Wrinkle your nose, hum a tune, and strum one nostril while holding the other one closed.  Nominally, this is not (too) embarrassing.  The level of embarrassment increases drastically if you have biological projectiles awaiting the first pluck of the old pipes.  My most recent attempt proved to be a catastrophe, and I abandoned my solo.

Old #2.

Elder Jackson, Winter 2001, at the Lowestoft Flat.

This was a time when I had... swelled a bit.  I don't look so bad here, but I gained about 30 pounds at one point as a missionary, and thus, my clothes wore a bit differently.  Here we see the results of changes in geometry matched with riding a bicycle every day.  JCPenney was good to sell me a suit with two sets of trousers, because once someone identified that my whites were showing through my blacks, I couldn't get changed fast enough!

New #1.

I was at a training meeting last month with a small group of participants and one trainer.  (It was a Scout Leader training for Venturing, for those interested.)  I was loving the material, and was enthusiastic with my responses to the trainer's questions.  At one point when the trainer was describing a particular part of the organizational structure, I (accidentally) reverberated my chair with a wee bit of flatulence.  (Is there a more polite way of saying that?)  

I was willing to be mature and just ignore it, as were my fellow participants.  However, the trainer, a very polite and respectable older man, had thought I was volunteering an interjection and had something to say.  "Yes Joe?"  Only, I could think of nothing to say to recover, so I awkwardly fumbled, "Oh, nothing, carry on!"  At that point, two of my classmates looked at me with a wink and a nod, as if to say, "Hahahahhahahahaha!!!!"

New #2.
This problem is more typical of men/boys.  My mom had a code-word.  XYZ stood for eXamine Your Zipper. Very discreet.  Well, it's tough to be discreet when you discover you are standing for the rest hymn very reverently up on the rostrum in front of 200 of your fellow-worshippers, and you discover you have 3.5 verses until the song is over and you can sit down again.  The most agonizing 3.5 verses of my life.  

There are several  reasons this problem might come about.  When I was a kid, I used to have a pair of jeans with a slippery zipper.  I probably celebrated the day when I outgrew them after the constant attention they required.  The offending trousers this summer had a button, a hook, and a zipper.  Getting 2 of the 3 fit the normal rhythm of dressing in my typical pants, and I have neglected part three on multiple occasions with these slacks.
In a small group, it's easy to cover the offending zipper until an opportune time comes.  But when you are holding your hymnbook at chest-level, THEN what do you do?  Turn around to face the wall?  Slowly drop my hymnal to waist level?  Clasp my hands in front of me to obscure the XYZ issue?  Do a quick down-and-up fixer action?  I couldn't think of anything that wouldn't draw attention.  So I wore it well until the hymn was over.  Luckily, most people don't watch the conductor when they sing.   Quick as a flash, while people were transitioning to be seated, I tugged the old YKK until I was secure again.  

Nobody said anything about it.  But still, I'm tortured to think, "How many people wanted to give me a wink and a nod as if to say, 'Hahahhahahah!'"?