Anita's Notebook

This is from a talk given by Ira Glass that I saw on YouTube the other day, I give you the story of a man named Joel and his ill-fated crab walk:

So Joel works in an office, probably not the most exciting place in the world but it seems like he makes it fun when he can.

His office manager sometimes brings in her nine year old daughter to help do little tasks like passing out mail and whatnot. Joel and the girl like to joke around and tease each other, doing stuff like chasing the other one around and sticking their tongues out, making funny faces etc. It’s a routine they’ve settled into and they have a lot of fun with it.

One day early in the morning he’s at the office and goes to the bathroom. When he comes out (after washing his face or something?) his glasses end up in his shirt pocket instead of on his face where they should be.

When he steps out he sees this “small person” walking down the hall towards him. He figures he’ll joke around with the girl like usual so he immediately goes into silly mode and starts to crab walk towards her. He describes it like this:

I sort of go down on my haunches and put my hands up as if they’re claws and kind of waddle towards her.

Like a crab, see?

LOL are you laughing yet? I know at this point in the story I was already giggling semi-uncontrollably because you just know that this whole crab walking thing isn’t going to turn out well.

And as I’m waddling towards her I say in this kind of creepy voice “Oh no! I can’t believe you’re here today!”

But as he says the word ‘today’ the small person comes into focus. And he realizes it’s not the girl.

Who was it then? It was one of the office interns …who is a midget.

He said that he immediately straightened up and started awkwardly apologizing with something along the lines of “Oh I’m sorry I thought you were somebody else.” LOL no doubt she was wondering who this other person could possibly be.

Anyway he realized that the only thing to do at that point was to apologize and get away as fast as possible and basically never talk to her again, which I think is a pretty good plan. Of course the best plan would be not to start crab walking down the office hallway without putting on his glasses first but hey that works too.

I wonder what the lady thinks of this whole incident. Obviously it’s a story of disaster and awkwardness for Joel to tell but I wonder if she ever tells people about the morning some random guy came out of the bathroom and started crab walking towards her while talking in funny voices.

“Oh no! I can’t believe you’re here today!” LOL.