for shame

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One day when I was 20, I lied to my boss to get out of going to work. Groundbreaking, I know. What made this incident special:

  1. I didn't simply say I was sick, like an intelligent person would. I said my apartment flooded, and
  2. My psychotic boss called my landlord to verify this, so my landlord showed up to see the flood.
Busted. Caught.

"Why face the music?" I decided. The boss was clearly gunning for me, so there was probably nothing left to be salvaged. Moreover, I was caught in an embarrassing lie. I never wanted to face any of those people again. And I didn't. I didn't even bother quitting. I just stopped showing up for work.

I've thought about that incident a lot this last week, what with Alex Rodriquez and Anthony Weiner, among others, proudly displaying their faces in public. Were I them, I never could. I'd be suicidally humiliated. I couldn't go grocery shopping, let alone hold press conferences. Do they not possess the shame gene at all? Will the word "disgraced" soon disappear from the language, like "lumming" and "twattle?"