It’s official: my coworkers and I are sick and twisted people.
Now, on top of getting my ass paddled with dog food-smeared spoons and having cold water dripped down the back of my pants when I bend over and having to protect myself from Purple Nerples, I have to listen to cracks about my much-feared Buttocks of Doom. I mean, one dog drops dead right as you go to sit on it, and all of a sudden you’re branded for life.
In all seriousness, we had a very gravely ill dog whose owners had elected euthanasia, and it was being decidedly uncooperative. I offered to sit on it (you don’t actually sit on the dog, but rather kneel above it, pinning the body with your legs–it’s just the thing for unruly dogs of a certain size), and right as I pulled it toward me, the dog just up and died. We weren’t terribly surprised, as we really hadn’t expected her to make it through her radiographs alive, but we were still sort of…nonplussed, I guess.
Right then, one of the other techs walked in, surveyed the scene for a second, and deadpanned, “Well, that makes things easier.” And then the wisecracks started about how I killed the dog, and how they’d all better be nice to me or I’d unleash my dreaded Ass of Death on them. “That’s what happens when you try to bite Tamara,” they told the other dogs, “she sits on you and kills you.”
So now I’m going to be Ol’ Death Butt. Doubtless, the weeks ahead hold many, many jokes about my killer ass. Coworkers will admonish each other to behave or else I’ll sit on them with my Buttocks of Doom. I’ll still be getting shit about this when we move in July.
Yeah, I know, it’s horrible to be joking about the death of someone’s pet. But after your sixth euthanasia of the night, you have to either lock yourself in the bathroom and cry for a couple hours or laugh about the Buttocks of Doom. Laughing keeps us able to keep coming back day after day. In this business, she who laughs, lasts.
