My Apologies to the Colonel, or, the most awkward side hug I’ve ever bestowed.

Well, that got your attention, didn’t it?

I’m really trying to laugh about this. Honestly. If I don’t laugh, I’ll curl up in a ball under the covers and never leave the apartment again, not even to go to the pool; Kevin can do all of our grocery shopping on the weekends! (Yeah, right; kid would come home with boxes of Pop-Tarts and cheese danishes from the bakery, and we’d have no veggies or fruit in the house.)

Let me explain. Yesterday, some other wives and I went to an all-day-informational-extravaganza-session-marathon-of-ridankulousness that was focused on TBS wives. At the end, with my brain full to bursting with information, and my blood sugar level hovering just above the soles of my shoes, I was ready to get the heck out of there. Unfortunately for my stomach, we still had to listen to our guest speaker, Colonel A., who is the commanding officer of TBS. He was very nice (but as another wife explained it, “totally bad-ass”). After a brief Q&A, we had to go up, one by one, shake his hand, and get a “diploma” for managing to sit and behave ourselves all day long. Honestly, we only did that for 16-18 years of our lives already-it’s called school. Most of us already have our bachelor’s degrees, and some have their masters or law degrees. My point is, we didn’t get a certificate for every day we went to school and didn’t catch the girls’ bathroom on fire. To add insult to injury, we also had to get our picture taken with the colonel. I’m not even sure the man likes photo-ops to begin with; it was hard to tell.

From my vantage point on the side, I couldn’t see what he was doing with his arm nearest the wife who was getting her certificate. I thought maybe he was putting his arm around them. I’m a touching kind of gal myself, and have really no issues with patting someone on the shoulder, hugging someone if they look like they could use a good squeeze…you get the picture. When my name was called, I went up, made eye contact, shook his hand, and got my diploma (woooo….). So far, all was well. Then the photo.

For a moment, he looked like he was going for the reacharound side hug, so I did too….but he wasn’t.

It was a fake-out, where he tricked me by doing an exaggerated stretch of the arm, and putting it behind his back. Uh, well, crap, so here I am with one arm around him, he has both hands behind his back. I have two options at this point. I can either remove my arm, making an awkward situation worse, or, I can keep my arm there and act like I meant to do that the whole time.

I went with option 2.

So Colonel, if you’re reading this, (no shame if you are, I Google myself regularly and there’s no harm in it), I’m really sorry for hugging you when you probably were in no mood for it. I’m just a hugger. (Of course, if there is a merciful God in heaven, and I firmly believe there is, the colonel will never remember this even happened.)

The saving grace was that Kevin laughed until he couldn’t speak when I told him about it last night. I’m glad he isn’t mad that I side-hugged his boss’ boss.