Sorry It's Late

The text of an E-card sent to my son-in-law very near the end of his latest birthday---


Sorry it's late.

Actually it is still your birthday and if you get this and read it before midnight it will still be your birthday, but I know you probably won't, since you are busy right now and it's getting late, but you know, that's how it goes some times.

Some times you plan to do something and then someone at work says something weird and out of left field and it's while you are eating lunch and you spew diet coke and tuna salad out of your nose all over your computer screen, and then you can't find one of those computer screen wipes that don't really work very good any way, not to mention that diet coke and chunks of tuna sort of burn in the back parts of your nasal passages so you spend a few minutes producing a sort of "sknark" sound trying to clear the goo and phlegm out, and you get most of it except for this one irritating little piece of pickle relish which just won't budge until you finally sneeze, on your computer screen of course. And in the middle of all this, the boss wants to talk about something totally trivial to you but seems to be quite important to him, like project delays and budget over runs and stuff like that.

So he finally leaves and you are about to regain a small inkling of the original thought to start to re-enter the firing synapses of your brain, the office manager comes by and wants to know why you are using more than your allotment of screen wipes, "did you know that they cost money?" and "we all are responsible for saving money as well as natural resources!" Screen wipes being made out of trees or oil or some sort of worm spun non-absorbent yuk smearing fiber.

Anyway, while you are making your best effort to show some slight bit of respect (actually you are trying not to laugh or jump up in a rage and tear her oddly shaped head off) you let out an enormously loud and long belch from the air you swallowed while catching your breath from the diet coke/tuna/nose thing. Well that sends her type A personality into a serious tizzy and sends all of your adjoining cell—I mean cube--mates into fits of laughter and spewing of their own which, of course, only serves to deplete the natural screen cleaner resources even more. So in effect I got sent to the Principal's office at work and forgot to send off an E-card in time for you to receive it during your actual birthday.

What can I say, but what I said to my boss.

Sorry.