The Office Christmas Party

It was the office Christmas party at my conservative school. We did an award show themed, replicated Oscars and teacher themed categories, a red carpet and everyone dressed to the nines. The management team had spent months planning this party, and it was a huge success. I wasn’t much in the way of decorating, but the award categories and over the top dramatic speeches had been mine to create and I was proud of them. We were halfway through the evening when someone leaned over and whispered that the manager doing the next introduction had to leave to check on her kids, and I was filling in. I could not, would not, I flat refused to get up in front of almost 200 of my peers and their families. Of the 10-person management team I was the youngest, quietest, and most likely to blend in with wallpaper. My coworker Jo pulled me towards the bathrooms, encouraging me, explaining it would be fun, it would be easy, it would be 30 seconds tops, and it would mean so much to the team. She didn’t win me over with her words, but with the liquid courage she had smuggled in and now offered me. I could do 30 seconds, I would just smile and read from the notecard, I tried to channel my inner Jerry Seinfeld, I could be casual.

Hands slightly shaking, pale skin scarlet red with embarrassment, I gripped the notecard and approached the elevated stage at the front of the room. My boss was wrapping up a joke about the category, casually killing it with the crowd. She turned to me as I got to the podium, giant smile on a perfectly made-up face, her body wrapped in sequins and sashes, looking every inch an award-winning actress. Oddly I felt relieved, no one was going to be looking at me with her standing there. “Well guys before we introduce the next category let's give the staff a big round of applause for that delicious meal!” as the room shook with noise, she tilted the mic away from her face and said to me “Girl we just had like 20 people and 2 of the next nominees duck out to the restrooms so we’re going to need to stall the program for 10 minutes or so!”

I just stared at her, heart thumping, palms sweating, every introverted cell in my body growing silent in panic and dread. She leaned back over, “You’re funny, this will be easy!”

Sure, I was funny, in my own way, in the quiet office, with small interactions, given paper and pen, given TIME. Even as my anxiety rose, a small part of me bossed up, I was funny, I could do this, I could make them laugh. My boss was back on the mic, introducing me, effortlessly elaborating on the bathroom situation, drawing chuckles and good-natured boos from the audience. She leaned over the podium, like it was just me and her, “so while we wait, anyone got a good joke?” one eyebrow raised, cuing me.

I have an 8-year-old nephew, I know a thousand and one lame jokes about dinosaurs, skateboards and talking toilets. “Sure, I know a joke.”

She turned towards the audience, “well this should be good, who’s ready for a joke?”

Just like that, every clean, politically correct, workplace appropriate joke vanished. Hyped on inner monologue, I took the mic and turned to the crowd. Trying to look and sound like a comedian, my dumb ass started with “So a pastor, a priest and a rabbi walk into a bar…” that was all I got out before the audience and my boss lost it. The laughter was oddly encouraging, it filled up the massive void of panic, and flooded me with adrenaline and confidence.

“Wait wait wait, I didn’t think I had to say a CLEAN joke!” she gasped into her mic.

“Well, I figured, I am on vacation next week, might as well go out with a bang.” My face and voice may have been cocky, but I was desperately trying to think of ANY OTHER JOKE.

“Yes, and after this joke we’ll see whether or not its paid!” She wiggled her eyebrows at the audience, drawing more laughs.

The laughter was fueling me, it was all or nothing, “So a pastor, a priest and a rabbi walk into a bar and they start discussing who is the best evangelist, who has saved the most souls, who is basically winning at religion.” As I did the set up, I locked eyes with my male boss, and his wife, who had spent 10 years in missions before joining our school. God forgive me.

“So they decide that that only way to prove who’s best, is that they’re each going to go into the woods and convert a bear.” I take a breath, the audience is shifting, smiling, wondering where this is going. I am sweating, shaking, faking a bravado that I’ve never had.

“They meet a week later, and the pastor goes, wow, it was such a great experience, I met a bear, read to him from the good book, baptized him in the river, he’s saved! The priest is all no no I had the best experience, I went to the woods, met a bear, sprinkled him with holy water, taught him to pray, he’s saved!” I take another breath, fully aware that I sound like a new Jersey gangster delivering this joke, avoiding eye contact with the audience I turn to my boss, “Sos then they both look at the rabbi, and the rabbi is in a full body cast, and he goes, yeah in hindsight I shouldn’t have led with circumcision.”

There was a beat of dead silence before laughter rolled out over the audience. I gratefully smiled at them as my boss shook her head at me, “Do I even ask if you have another joke ready?”

A dirty joke involving how many pineapples can fit up a person’s rear end popped into my disaster of a brain. “Nope I think we’ve had enough religious offense and lets me honest, no one came here tonight expecting to hear the word circumcision, so let’s end on that high note.”