Uh Oh Cheerios and Fly-By Doo Doo Bombings

Uh oh, Cheerios. You are probably thinking, "Isn't the slogan, 'Uh oh, Spaghettios'?" Well, recently, just last Sunday, I had an "Uh oh, Cheerios" moment. That moment came when I looked down at my shirt at the end of the church service and saw a chocolate Cheerio that had somehow adhered itself to my shirt, probably with a little milk acting as glue. I noticed this at the end of the service, which meant that I had sung with the worship team in front of the congregation and socialized during the Chapelccino coffee time, all the while having this charming decoration stuck to me.

How had it survived all of this? Nobody likes to (hopefully) embarrass their friends, but a good friend will point out that you have a strand of toilet paper on your shoe or a bit of mustard on your face, particularly before you are going to be on a platform somewhere. I can remember a time when an elderly lady in the church choir had a serious wardrobe malfunction, her skirt splitting up the back, exposing a lot of slip and leg and rear end. The dear lady, either from a little bit of Alzheimer's or her dreamy artistic disposition, seemed completely unaware of this, but some other choir ladies formed a human barricade around her in the church foyer to protect her from humiliation.

So, a Cheerio on the shirt is not quite at that level of potential embarrassment, but I have to wonder if it was noticed or unnoticed. I sat down with a cup of coffee at Chapelccino time, and a church lady friend made sure I had one of her home-made zucchini muffins and told several of us a story of how she had met her husband. It had drama! It had conflict! She told us about the moment when she first met him and how she had felt electricity as he pressed a business card into her hand and then how he promptly lost her interest when he was over an hour late to their first appointment. I was left hanging then as we had to hurry upstairs and into the service.

Did the Cheerio blend into the paisley pattern on my shirt? Did it look like a little brooch from a distance? I can just imagine the inner dialogue of the church ladies. "I like her brooch. It's simple. It's minimalist. It's organic. Where can I get one?" Maybe I should go into the jewelry business and gradually expand from Cheerio brooches to Froot Loop earrings.

I did a Google search and found the earrings above from the Sweet Clay Creations shop on Etsy.com. Maybe cereal as jewelry is not too far-fetched of a fashion trend.

My cousin had a different suggestion when I told him my story. He said, "You can always claim it was a political statement and that you were raising awareness for the Church Mouse Hunger Project."

This is, unfortunately, not the worst of my embarrassing and rather recent mishaps with clothing. Over the Memorial Day weekend, I went with friends to Seaside Heights in New Jersey. I was initiating a brand new pair of white shorts from Anthropologie, shorts of a delicate embroidered fabric. There must be some sort of Murphy's Law in effect when wearing white. If you wear white, you are practically daring staining substances to jump onto your person.

I spent most of my time on the beach lying down on my beach towel and enjoying the sounds of nature, including those charming little sea gulls. I looked up and noticed how graceful they were in the air with their little black feet tucked up against their tails.

Photo from Wikipedia

At one point, I showed myself slightly less lazy and sat up, watching the waves and the birds and the children around me playing in the sand. One seagull rewarded my admiration with a fly-by doo doo bombing. That's right. I was the innocent victim of a fly-by doo doo bombing. Not only that, but the scheming creature literally did this behind my back over my towel that was so nicely exposed while I was sitting up. So, I unknowingly lay right back down in my nice fresh white shorts.

I didn't notice anything strange until we were getting ready to leave, and I noticed this nice bit of squashed unidentified brownish substance on my towel. I then asked my friends, "Do I have anything on me?"

My friend Iris answered, "It looks like the poop." My friend Iris is originally from Hong Kong, and although she has lived in the States now for many years, she can still occasionally insert a "the" where you don't expect it. So, I made my way from the beach with a towel wrapped around me to hide a brownish blot on my nether regions.

Just to prove that Murphy's Law is in effect while wearing white, Iris was also wearing a fairly new white sleeveless sweater that day. We had our dinner at a nice little Italian restaurant and pizzeria in Toms River where we could hear the owner singing away in Italian in the next room. While making a point, Iris touched the table and flipped a fork full of tomato sauce onto herself and her white sweater.

I suppose it could be worse. The seagull could have arranged his timing so that I was still lying down when he flew by, and then the doo doo bomb may have landed directly on me.