The Joy of Roger's Black Eye

Roger is quite a nice man. Overweight, but that aside, there’s just not anything he wouldn’t do for somebody with the slightest need. He was born somewhat goofy, but he’s probably the greatest employee our company has. Dependable, faithful, loyal…

And so he came to work with a big black eye a week ago Monday. Of course, everybody asked him “What happened to you, Roger?” or “What’s the other guy look like?”

“It happened at church,” he told us, somewhat embarrassed. His head hung a little and he didn’t want to make eye contact.

At church? Roger goes down to that little Methodist church.

“Well, yea,” he said. “There was a little lady come sit in the pew in front of me. Pretty soon, the preacher told everybody to stand up and sing a hymn. Well, when this little lady stood up, her dress was all stuck up between her cheeks, you know?”

We all nodded and giggled a little. “Been there, seen that,” Bubba spoke for all of us.

“Well, I wanted to be a gentleman and I thought she’d be embarrassed if she knew what she looked like.” He rubbed his eye a little. “I tried to be, you know, careful…”

“What did you do, Roger?” somebody asked suspiciously.

“Well, I leaned over the pew and pulled that dress out from her cheeks. Real soft like. She didn’t like that. No sir! She swung around and whacked me with her hymn book!”

We laughed till we knocked over the water cooler. “It hurt so much I almost cussed in church!” We teased poor ol’ Roger all week. He was a good sport about it, though, and by Friday evening he’d healed up.

Now, that crazy Roger came to work yesterday (Monday) with another big ol’ black eye. Only this time his eye was all swoll shut. “Come on, Roger, tell us it ain’t so. How’d you get that shiner?”

“Same way as last week,” he said real quietly.

“No!”

“Yes, sir.” We were all dumbfounded. Even if your elevator don’t go all the way up, at least it goes up a little. “I ended up sitting behind that same lady,” he said. “She had on that same dress, too! Sure enough, when the preacher told us to stand up, her dress was stuck up there ‘tween her cheeks again.”

“Come on, Roger. Don’t tell us you tried to fix it again!”

“No, no, no. I learned my lesson last Sunday.”

“Well, then, how’d you get that eye all beat up? It’s a bad one, too, Roger.”

“I know it is.” He touched his eye tenderly. “Well, this new fellow sitting next to me seen the lady’s situation, so he reached over the pew and pulled on her dress."

"Well, I knew the lady didn’t like that, so right away, I stuffed it back up there...”