Wednesday, May 8, 2013

Foosball and Beyond

This is a story that is well over two years in the making. You may recall my posts about Foosball. If not, that’s okay. The gist of it is that my place of work has a foosball table and there have been a number of foosball related activities over the years (tournaments, olympics, fundraising etc). As a result, a couple years ago, I started learning how to play foosball with never having stepped foot in front of a table before.

Gorm is ridiculously good at foosball; he took me under his wing, showed me the ropes and kicked my ass in the process.
ThatWhiteGirl - foosball ninja - grasshopper
ThatWhiteGirl - foosball Ninja - Gorm Mad
As my skill increased, so did my expectations of the game. As I began to be able to coordinate my men and learned to defend my net, I started expecting better results from myself than I had reason to expect.

This led to, what has been described as, devastating lows of foosball. Which basically means that when I lost, I made a scene.
ThatWhiteGirl - foosball ninja - temper tantrum
Whenever I threw my typical temper tantrum, the same person would happen to be in the lunch room, I’ll call him The Ninja because he always seemed to appear out of nowhere. This is a person with whom I never really spoke. Nods of acknowledgment and a "Good Morning" here and there, but that's about it.

It was unfortunate, to say the least, that this is the person who had to witness me at my all-time foosball low. Every. Single. Day.

The only good thing out of that situation was the fact that The Ninja made reference to me in his farewell email when he left the company. A special feat considering we had exchanged less than a dozen words in the 8 years of “working together”.

Fast forward a few months. I made supervisor at work and, as a result, ended up sharing an office with the manager.

Fast forward a year. The company that The Ninja went to, basically went belly up and he was laid off. It just so happens that he’s skilled in mysterious ways. I guess you would expect nothing less from a ninja. It also just so happens that we still needed his expertise and managed to bring him back on. He is now working closely in my department and I have conversations with him daily.

Fast forward another 6 months. We finally filled the second supervisor position and in order for the new supervisor and I to be in close proximity, the manager kicked me out of the office and placed us in an office with The Ninja.

Not only is The Ninja sneaky, but he’s also extremely observant and has an excellent memory. He also is willing to share the information that he compiles. He’s made a point at telling me about my foibles.

For one, when I talk to him and/or my staff, he gets the distinct impression that he’s talking to a school teacher. An elementary school teacher. Not so much the words coming out of my mouth as it is my demeanor. I’m not sure what’s worse.

He also pointed out that I tend to mimic people. Not in a bad I’m-going-to-make-fun-of-you kind of way, but if someone says “Hi Heather!” all sunshine-y, I’ll say something back in the same way. If someone grunts my name, I do the same. I thought that I was mostly aware of this (it’s can be a bit of a fun little game for me), but today when the person I was talking with left the office, The Ninja turned to me and asked if I’d caught myself doing it.
ThatWhiteGirl - foosball ninja - doing what
ThatWhiteGirl - foosball ninja - copycat
I’m likely to become very self conscious of my actions, despite the fact that he claims they aren’t bad things. Mere observations. Sure…
ThatWhiteGirl - foosball ninja - no judging
Happy (actual) 200th Blog Post!!

5 comments:

  1. happy 200th blog post and yay for a gif! We had a pool table until we moved office...i never learned the way of the pool but we might get a foosball table now.

    Also I do the same as you...can you kick a ninja?

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  2. Happy (real) 200th! And the gif of you getting punched in the stomach did not disappoint.

    Admittedly, I can do a bit of the copycat thing if I'm not careful, I.E. being overly sunshiny in my hello if the person who just greeted me was also overly sunshiny. I don't know why I do it, but now that I'm aware of it (it was pointed out to me by a friend) I almost never do it anymore.

    Awareness is half the battle! ... or something like that.

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  3. happy 200th! and that is some quality gif making you have going on!

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  4. We are probably geared to mimic people to some extent. Keeps you safe and part of the herd and all that jazz. It makes you think that maybe you WOULD jump off a bridge if all your friends were doing it. I mean - you've probably felt that compulsion to yawn just because the person across from you did...*shrugs*...Fight it or embrace it I guess.

    Very amusing post - when I first saw the gif, I thought you were getting your heart ripped out.

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  5. Poke - yeah... but he'd probably dodge it. Or kick my ass for trying.

    Beer - but it's fuuuuun!

    Anon - thanks I was pretty proud of it myself!

    Gorm - it's basically the same thing.

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