Oh No, She Didn't! (Or Jeff Gets Me in Trouble)

In the past I have mentioned being in touch with my inner 12 year old boy, Jeff.  He's been behaving for a long time but in the past couple of weeks he has come roaring out of hiding.  You know, it has to be him because I am such a well-behaved person, always maintaining decorum...ok, wait....lemme try that again with a straight face.

Well, this week at work Jeff was in rare form.  Usually he only comes out to play when the boss is out of earshot.  His buddy, my coworker's inner 12 year old boy, Barry, is the one who tends to get caught by the boss.  Barry can get really hilariously raunchy and is typically the one who gets busted trying to be discrete about it and failing miserably. The boss is a notorious prankster but very conservative about innuendo so in spite of my tendency toward such on this blog I do attempt to keep it under wraps at work when I am within earshot of the boss. 

One of the adjusting tables had a badly damaged cushion we've been patching pretty regularly.  It finally was beyond such temporary fixes so the boss ordered a replacement cushion.  At the end of one evening it was quite slow so the boss decided to switch out the cushions on the table.  This involved the need for a few tools to partly disassemble the table to remove the old cushion before replacing it with the new one.  Once he was ready to install the new one he held it up to determine how to orient it as Jeff and Barry looked on.  The boss declared with some amazement, "I never know what to do when there are more holes than screws."

Without missing a beat (read: without engaging the brain before opening the mouth) Jeff interjected dryly, "That's what she said."  At which point the boss' jaw dropped at realizing I said this (rather than Barry) boldly, right in front of him.  In shocked tones, as my coworkers looked on in utter speechlessness, he declared in all seriousness that this was the dirtiest joke he'd heard since he was in college.

This is the point at which most people's brain might finally kick in and cause their mouths to slam shut.  Instead, my grey matter continued the chain of misfiring synapses as I struggled to imagine a man over the age of 50 honestly claiming that is the foulest thing he has heard in over 30 years.  My response.....wait for it.....

"Really?  Wow!  You must have lived a very sheltered life!" (Coworkers were turning purple trying to breathe in between guffaws.)

He continued to insist it had been 3 decades since he'd heard anything so filthy as he bent to apply the new cushion and look for hardware that had fallen to the floor saying, "I don't think I have enough screws."

My coworker's alter-ego, Barry, quietly deadpanned, "I never have that problem."

Jeff replied, "That's not what I hear."

The boss wept into the cushion.