How Surreal Did My Friday Morning Become?

Friday morning went from normal to nutty-as-a-circus-elephant-turd, in record time today.

The first abnormality that confronted me, was the two near-full, refrigerator-chilled bottles of Mountain Dew standing side-by-side at the bottom of the waste paper basket. This sight, to put it mildly, was completely left-field level unexpected.

I extracted the two bottles of cold soda, and placed them on the desktop above the basket, to fully absorb the twisted reality of such a discovery. I then got a suspicious notion. Was the liquid inside the bottles, really their original contents? I lifted one of the bottles, which became instantly sweaty in my hand, from the transition to room-temperature. I shook it, to see if the liquid would fizz with carbonation. It didn't.

It appeared to be yellowy Mountain Dew… that wouldn't bubble. I immediately suspected the worst.

I put the bottle down as fast as I could, and trotted to the supervisor. "Someone put two bottles of URINE in the department trashcan, and it looks like they even got them cold in the refrigerator for who-knows-what reason, before they did," I cried!

My boss then chuckled, and said "I put those there."

My eyes wouldn't blink. "YOU did??"

"They'd been in the fridge for weeks, they'd been opened, they were old. I threw them away," she said, laughing more.

"So they're really just two old bottles of soda," I asked, to double-check my own senses?

"Well, you could have opened one and tried it, if you had doubts," she grinned.

I left her office, and headed back to my work area, to discover that the entire department had heard me yell "two bottles of URINE!" And… as I made my way to my chair, I saw a city policeman enter the building, his attention distracted over toward us… because an interdepartmental discussion had arisen on the benefits of drinking one's own urine – inspired by my loud scream of the two chilled bottles of tinkle.

Someone was apparently practicing survival techniques… at work.

The cop, across the room, attending to some benign business at the subscription window, stared in a daze at the discourse raging at fever pitch amongst the employees… about the pros and cons of ingesting pee-pee.

"You guys," said the supervisor, seeing my pleading gaze and stepping onto the floor to address the group, "it was just old soda in those bottles, really."

But the argument by then had reached a crescendo. Now they were quoting pop-culture reality show stars who'd drank piss on TV, and distant relatives who'd survived for days in desolate locales around the globe, quenching their thirst for self-preservation's sake – guzzling their own self-generated salty gatorade.

"You people shut up, please," the boss finally said, fighting to keep her eyes from rolling as she saw the staring officer. "It was two old bottles of soda. They'd been opened a long time ago by someone, and they were flat."

The pee-drinking debate subsided momentarily, but throughout the rest of the morning, the day's overall theme had been thusly set. Whispered points and counterpoints of piss-chugging's benefits and side effects raged back and forth randomly, past lunch and into the afternoon.

And I had started it. Everything said from that moment on, upon this unfortunate workday, was mentally weighed by each worker for its worthiness of urination innuendo. I dared not enter the breakroom for a second cup of coffee for dread of stinging satire directed my way with 50 shades of yellow.

I mean… gee whiz, everyone!