Oh

On Sunday morning, I got up to go to the toilet.

Don't worry, that's not the whole anecdote.

I must have had some words and phrases going round in my dreaming skull, and I came up with a poem in the time before I went back to bed (it was early - 10:30ish).

It was a collaborative process between my conscious and unconscious mind(s). You can see that some of it makes sense, and some of it doesn't. Anyway, here it is:

Connie Computer, boxed-up in her finery
I've got her number and her number is binary
She's telling me stories (and the stories are fun)
Of the battles she's won zero one zero one

AA Milne is spinning in his grave (as stipulated in his will).

***

Today at the work canteen, I was buying lunch.

Don't worry, that's not the whole anecdote.

I was buying some salad bar salad (as I tend to do). I also had some water with me. It was my water bottle that I've had for some days now, filled with water cooler water.

Salad bar salad and water cooler water. A match made in heaven.

But as I was paying, I noticed that I was being charged for the water.

"No problem - I'll just tell the cashier that," I thought, in my dreamy skull.

But I've been tired, and my brain was slow. So the best I could come up with was:

"No, that's MY OWN water."

MY OWN water.

I'd put emphasis in the wrong place and used the wrong words. MY OWN words.

It implied that I had created the water myself. Perhaps I owned and operated a spring. Perhaps I liked to drink my own crystal-clear urine.

I don't.

I should make that clear.

I don't.

It wasn't water closet water.

It was water cooler water.

I just wanted to have some water cooler water with my salad bar salad, and then end it.

I didn't make eye contact with the cashier, so I didn't see a look of contempt in her eyes. But I'm sure it was there.

I'd made an accidental proprietary stand. I'd planted my flag in liquid and claimed it for Queen and Country (even though the Queen isn't interested in my urine - water I mean - and my Country doesn't mean much to me, despite what me capitalising the word might suggest).

But I didn't get charged for the water.

So the moral of the story is: be an idiot.