Whoa There, Don’t Blame Me

For one day, one brief shining moment, I can honestly say ‘it’s not my fault,’ especially at work. Well HONESTLY saying that might be a stretch, but in light of the fact that Friday the 13th (uh-oh) is ‘Blame Someone Else Day,’ I can now tell you whose fault it really is. Or whose it might be. Or I’ll just tell you whose fault I am deciding it was based on who I feel like blaming. (Wow, after those last two sentences, I feel like The Grinch taking about the whose and who’s so much. The noise, noise, noise. Sorry) Folks, you gotta like the sound of blaming someone else. Much like Ronald Reagan, we’ll all get to be Teflon coated for the day. This could be my chance to really stand out in the office.

I figure (which is a good hint that I’m probably wrong right off the bat) that there are two kinds of people in the world. Those who man-up and take the blame and those who shirk responsibility and blame someone else. I absolutely do not like blaming someone else for something I have or have not done, but true to my PR roots, I tend to shift blame focus somewhere else so that whatever involves me can be completely forgotten. Let’s say on some odd, once in a lifetime occurence, when Jupiter collides with Mars (oh no, I just quoted the song ‘Aquarius,’ I think that officially means I become a social outcast in the next 5 minutes. I’m melting…) that I miss a work deadline. When confronted with that, I might say something to the effect of ‘did you ever hear back on that initiative I asked you about a few months back’ to shift the focus to something else. Or perhaps I might respond with ‘wow has my computer been acting up lately. I spent so much time booting and rebooting my PC that I got behind on my project.’ See, I’m not blaming anyone there, I am offering up an excuse. Yes, I know that excuse can be construed as lying, but I assure you that the ‘lying’ as you refer to it, is purely an unintended consequence. Again, please notice that I am not actually blaming anyone, so I am hoping for brownie points there. Although I’d prefer coconut macaroon points or maybe Girl Scout Samoan cookie points. Those taste so good they’re like bonus points!

The beauty of it all is that on Friday, for the first time ever, I can blame someone else, like the butler. Yes, on Friday, I will actually be able to tell someone that the butler did it while not being engaged in a board game. For fun, I might even throw in where and how the butler did it. In fact, I’m pretty sure the reason that I missed turning in my expense report last week was because the butler did it with the plumbing wrench in the study during Anderson Cooper’s 360 on CNN. Oh wait, was that too specific? You have to understand that I don’t have a lot of practice in the art of blaming. Man, it sure is fun though. I could really get used to ‘blaming.’

For instance, the reason I forgot to call my grandmother on her birthday was that my friend called me at the same time I was looking up my grandmother’s new phone number in our address book. My friend kept wanting to run the schematics of his new water-fueled car engine by me. It seems he was having trouble storing the energy while the car was idling, hence losing power. And since he knows I am an expert in the field of water power, he desperately wanted my input. So as you can see, it was all my friend’s fault that I forgot to call my grandmother. And yes, the fact that I am in no way a scientific expert on anything or that I have no friend who could invent such an engine is completely irrelevant. What is relevant is that I just blamed someone else, which is completely acceptable on Friday and that the reason I provided definitely trumps the real reason I forgot to call her on her birthday. (Note to self: put my grandmother’s birthday on the calendar next year).

And speaking of calendars, all the programs I have been watching about global warming lately really are starting to get me concerned. Sorry, I know that has nothing to do with calendars, but it’s been a while since I did a segue and I’m a little rusty. I think before we can really solve global warming, we need to identify the biggest culprits. Yep, that means BLAMING someone. But to who to blame? Well, I chose to blame my neighbor. He mows his front and back lawns with his gas powered mower EVERY SINGLE WEEKEND. Seriously man, what’s the deal? He mows his yards every weekend and then that means I have to get up and mow my yards every weekend which means that I have to miss some really great sports event on TV like bowling or curling I am running my gas powered mower, which leaves a really big carbon footprint (did I impress you there with the ‘carbon footprint’ use? I saw it on some TV show a few weeks ago). We’re talking a huge carbon footprint here. A carbon footprint big enough to make Sasquatch’s prints look like Cabbage Patch baby feet. Not that I know anything about Cabbage Patch Kids though. And if for some reason I did, it’s because Lucy and Ethel each have a couple. Look at that, I just blamed them and didn’t even realize it. Blame Someone Else Day really is working out quite well.

There is so much more I have to say about blaming others and Blame Someone Else Day, but it’s my Dad’s birthday and I need to get back to the celebration we are having in his honor. Well, at least that’s what my mom tried to get across to me when she just said ‘we came all this way to your house for your father’s birthday and you are sitting at the computer.’ Oh no, I actually just blamed my mother for something. I guess therapy is next for me. I blame…well, I’d better stop while I’m ahead.

And by the way, Happy Father’s Day to all you fathers out there! And all you muthas mothers out there, because when you think about it, you kinda had a lot to do with it too. I’m looking forward to a relaxing day and watching the race with Lucy and Ethel, at least until about lap 10 – they still have pretty short attention spans.



***I have to share with you a new website that I found: http://diy.despair.com/motivator.php. It's a website that lets you make your own motivational posters like the one I created for this post. Since discovering it, productivity in my life has fallen to a minus 175%. Unless of course you count productivity solely on the amount of motivational posters made. In that case, I'm up 475%.