Make it so, Number One

I, a male co-worker, a female vice president and two more female co-workers were sitting in the cafeteria eating lunch, when all of a sudden the female vice president launched into what she must have thought was a riveting tale involving the potty-training of her newest grandchild. This conversation was hardly lunchtime material, nor was it particularly interesting or entertaining, so I drifted off to think of more important things; items still outstanding on my desk, what we might have for dinner that night...how come the Starship Enterprise is able to make whooshing noises in the vacuum of space...then my male co-worker, apparently noticing my sudden non-attentiveness to the conversation at hand, commented wryly that I would be participating in these conversations in the future.

Cautiously I looked around. Of the five of us, three of us were indeed engaged in the toilet discussion. The only two who weren't were him and me. I was just barely in the minority and had to tread carefully at this point. But I forged ahead anyway.

"I'm pretty sure," I said slowly, "that I will never find the subject of potty-training, or any other bodily function, to be an acceptable conversation topic at lunch time." Whereupon three people stopped talking and left my male co-worker and I arguing about whether eating could be considered a "bodily function" and whether it was an acceptable mealtime conversation piece. We happily decided it was and then continued eating our lunches in peace, having shut out the potty-train for the duration.

Sometimes you need help with your behavior modification project. Thank god I'm not the only sane person at the lunch table.