It = jacket crown …
while I was giving a presentation in a zoom meeting … I felt something really hard in my mouth going around… a jacket crown got loose … luckily from a moler, so not completely “in your face” … but nevertheless - talk about awkward moments
any fun stories of parts falling off of you or other awkward moments?
No, but I can’t resist- molar.
Once, many years pre-COVID and the resultant proliferation of Zoom calls, I was presenting something or another to my team plus a bunch of people from other departments. Something sure had a musty smell and I was surreptitiously sniffing parts of my sweater, as I was concerned that maybe it sat damp too long before it went into the dryer. Quick, deep breaths as I passed my arm in front of my face writing on the whiteboard. No one noticed, I’m sure, as it was a Monday morning and interest in what I was saying was extremely low.
It was low right up until the moment I got a deep snootful of the smell of cat pee. I think my soul left my body in that moment. I was told that I shouted, tore off the sweater, threw it in the hall, and sat down to think about not barfing. Everyone was very entertained.
I’ve done this in the real live office. During a performance review, no less. I’d have preferred Zoom for this purpose any day.
I can’t find this story - I’m pretty sure it came from here - but a woman described attending a job interview in which she ran into some minor construction outside the building. She ended up skirting under a tree and around a bush to get into the building. She had to brush some leaves out of her hair, but she was good to go.
Or so she thought.
As she sat responding to the interviewer’s questions, live insects began to drop from her hair and crawl across the the table.
I’ve never seen it topped.
In the middle of a lecture I was giving, my wristwatch flew off and was caught by a student in the front row. “A plus,” was my response.
I was in a Zoom meeting at the beginning of pandemic, when a mouse ran directly across my keyboard.
Luckily, I was muted and had the camera off, so my coworkers were not treated to the sight of me jumping out of my chair and shouting.
Nothing like what’s being described, but I was in an actual (physical) meeting once – you know the kind where people actually go into a room and sit together so they can talk about stuff? This one was considered to be important and was beginning to run into the late afternoon when I had to interrupt with two points. Point #1 was that I had scheduled a vacation and we had rented a cottage for the week and needed to leave pretty soon if we were to get there while there was still daylight. Point #2 was that I was experiencing acute pains that might be appendicitis and, if so, would soon be dead, rendering point #1 moot. Either way, I needed to leave.
Epilogue: Went directly to an emergency appointment with my PCP, who poked and prodded and informed me that I did not have appendicitis, but the beginnings of a hernia, and was cleared to leave for the cottage.
One time when I was a teenager, I put a pair of jeans in the tub to soak with some bleach. I was pleasantly surprised to find out later they had turned snow white! They were beautiful. I decided to wear them on a date that weekend.
The date was going…well. Too well. The jeans were…under stress. And they self-destructed. Date over. 
Two months ago, I’m sitting on the sofa watching The Repair Shop, munching on cheese puffs, when suddenly there’s something hard in the middle of my cheese-puff-bolus. Didn’t bug me at first – I’m always finding something hard in snack foods, especially corn-ish snacks – but when I isolated the offending morsel, it was one-third of a molar with attached filling amalgam!! It isn’t bothering me at the moment, but I should probably get to a dental clinic and let some student yank the mother.
At our first work-from-home company Zoom at the beginning of the pandemic, all was going well until my cat dropped a mouse at my feet, which then ran behind the piano.
In a live meeting, not a zoom meeting, one time I was giving an important presentation, and I started sweating, and I suddenly realized I was having flop sweats, and that just led me to sweat more, and it became so obvious as the sweat rolled off my forehead and I wiped it away and people were staring at me….
About twenty minutes later I was back in my office still sweating, but also becoming more and more nauseated, and I came to realize to my horror that it wasn’t flop sweats, I was running an actual fever, and had some sort of norovirus. I lay on the floor of my office for a little while, and then I made my way to the train station, and had one of the most unpleasant train rides home ever.
So, I guess that’s the story of something that I didn’t actually lose in the meeting, thank goodness.
I tend to wear clothing items til they practically disintegrate. I’ve had a few wardrobe malfunctions. I’ve excused my self to the restroom and tossed a bra in the trash. I’ve had to buy or borrow a T-shirt a couple of times. So far nudity hasn’t happened as anyone would notice.
My husband brought me a pair of pricey handmade leather sandals from Mexico once. They fit. Kinda cute after I got a couple beads out of the picture. I decided to wear them one day. I was walking down the parking lot into a Target store. My left foot felt hot. I looked down. All I saw was straps of the sandal. The whole sole was 3 steps behind me. And the right one was barely hanging on to life. I walked in Target barefoot. Bought a pair of flip flops and wore them out the door. The Mexican sandals were just junk.
When I was in sixth grade, I was staying at a friend’s house, and her sister was also having a friend over. So the four of us, giggly preteens, decided to play Truth or Dare. One of the girls dared me to take off my shirt and sing the 12 Days of Christmas. I was an early developer, so by sixth grade I was a C-cup, and it was not a daunting prospect to sit in a bra in a room full of my friends. I take the dare.
So just as I started belting out the song, my dear friend runs over and throws the bedroom door open. Unbeknownst to her, her father was walking down the hall at that very moment, looked up and saw me.
Next thing I know, a teasing male voice booms out: “I see someone in a brassier!”
“Agghh! Maggie, shut the door!”
Mortified. Utterly mortified. I could not look her Dad in the eye after that, and thankfully my friend re-enacted the whole thing at dinner that night, lest we forget.
I found a tooth in my ice cream. I yell across the ice-cream parlor to Mrs Cad about it and I’m already spending the millions I’m going to get from this lawsuit. She yells back, “Are you sure it isn’t yours?” I feel with my tongue. DAMN! Time to get a new crown.