The precarious business of sleeping limbs

Halfway through the job interview dinner I realized that my leg was asleep.

Not a little asleep, but completely numb. Completely useless. Like a huge, painful piece of driftwood hanging from the trunk of my body.

When I stood up, as, inevitably I would be forced to do, what would happen?

I would fall down? Maybe I would fall suddenly and accidentally grab hold of this nice girl Sheila's coat sleeve. Sheila does really seem to be the only nice girl that works on this team. Or at least that's what my inward scoop is just now. The rest of them seem like normal average dull coworking types.

The more you get to know them, the more backstabbing they become at the watercooler, until office cuts means that the watercooler company contract is cancelled and then all the gossip moves to the copymachine and into the bathroom.

And when I grab Sheila's coat sleeve by accident, we will both come crashing down on these dishes, still smeared with the sauce from the ribs that we ate and her coat sleeve, Sheila's nice carefully groomed black coat would be ruined. Maybe her shirt and definitely all of my new interview clothes.

And the damn thing hurt. I kept thinking maybe I should get up and go the mens room so I could walk it off or stumble to my humiliation before anyone else was standing and I would take them down with me. But I couldn't make myself take the humiliation.

So I didn't....

I waited until the very last minute, until everyone else at the table was standing and ready to go home, and then, only then, I stood up.