No Eye Contact. Ever. Again.

Technology is such a wonderful thing. I can say I love it more than I hate it. BUT, when I do hate it - it's a burning, not healthy and totally unreasonable hate. Mostly because it is my fault it has bitten me in the britches and I could have prevented it.

Mr. Zoom embraces technology so fast and so flexibly - that he often can not understand what is wrong with the rest of us. If you are a retailer or utility that requires payments from the Zooms, you BETTER have an on line and preferably an automatic payment interface or Mr. Zoom might actually find your offices and demand you do so - in person.

Naturally then, at Holiday time we Zooms are going to coordinate gift purchases via e-mail. This week a rapid fire informational session was happening when it was brought to our attention that Mr. Zoom had accidentally sent an e-mail containing information about a gift already purchased - including the person who the gift was for. OOPS! He made repairs quickly, and all is forgiven.

When that happened, I thought to myself "Wow. That mistake was totally mine. I know for a fact I should have been the one to have done that. After all, I've totally shot my e-mail yapper off to the wrong parties in the past, and he's so careful and better at this kind of thing than I am."

Later in the week I shot off a customary at work - I'm thinking about you and love you - e-mail to Mr. Zoom. We work at the same company, but you'd be surprised how little we actually see of each other during the work day. I like to send afternoon reminders that we are married now, and regardless of any smartening up he's done since agreeing to marry me, he can't get away from me. I knew he'd been super busy this week with a tech roll out, but was still a little perplexed at having received no return e-mail almost an hour later.

About that time, I saw an e-mail arrive from my Boss. The preview box showed me the contents of his e-mail to me: "??" That's when I realized I had sent the following e-mail TO MY MALE, MARRIED BOSS - Subject: gosh I love you - Contents of e-mail: so very much.

At that moment, all of the oxygen on our green and blue planet was then sucked out of the atmosphere and transported directly into my head. And it hurt. A lot. Because apparently my brain no longer resides in there and nature hates a vacuum. I immediately shot off an explanatory e-mail to the Boss: OMG. I AM SOOOO SORRY. THAT WAS SUPPOSED TO GO TO MY HUSBAND!! And then I fought the urge to faint at my desk while sitting in my chair.

My Boss came out of his office and mercifully, had a good long laugh with me and the few other people around us who were let in on what happened. I was so terribly embarrassed by my error that others started to blush FOR ME. Then we all started laughing so hard we all cried. I continued to laugh cry while I deleted all the evidence of my brain taking leave of my head.

Later that evening Mr. Zoom and I were running errands. I began my story this way: "I'm going to tell you a story. It is horribly embarrassing for me. Literally. painfully. embarrassing. But I'm going to tell you anyway." I got my story out, and as expected he shook his head in that "only my wife" way. He said "And how come I'm only hearing about this now?" I replied "Because I literally just this second got over it enough to tell you without crying."

And we laughed. Because that's what we do. Although between fits of laughter I had pangs of tears - and in an attempt to justify the see/saw emotions I blubbered "Ok, so let's review. You ruin a teeny part of someone's Christmas by accidentally revealing one of their gifts to them. I wind up nearly breaking up two marriages and embarrassing myself beyond all .... all... get-it-backedness (was searching for the word redemption)!!"

It's time for me to set the e-mail program to "delay all sent messages for 5 minutes". Even if it wouldn't have saved me this time. Maybe it will manage to keep me married for just that much longer.