Patting the elephant in the room


We all know I'm not exactly a 'subtle' sort of person. I find it extremely difficult to ignore the bleeding obvious. In fact, I am more likely to give the elephant in the room one great big cuddle rather than ignore him.

How do other people do it?

Like, the other night at the pre-school Parent Committee meeting there was a new dad there. Whilst it was lovely to see a new dad getting involved with the pre-school, when asked if he had anything to add he just went on and on and on. That's the Boring bit. The Elephant bit is that he had his eyes closed the entire time that he was waffling on. So he was speaking to about ten people in the room with his eyes closed.

I thought it was just hysterically funny and had to hide behind the Tonka Truck shelf to stop myself from laughing. Worse than that though is that no-one else in the room appeared to either notice or be phased by this bizarre public speaker.

This sort of thing happens to me all the time. Not the Sleeping-Dad-Waffling part, but the wondering why no-one else looks like they just want to leap up and say "oh for gods sake, open your eyes when you're talking, you look deranged!'.

Other recent elephants have included:

A room full of business people ignoring the fact that one of their own was crying quietly throughout the entire meeting.

- and -

A mother at school waxing lyrical about how sweet her boy is when everybody knows he is the boy who took a knife into Kindergarten last week.

I had to walk away, wide-eyed on each occasion.

So help me, please. How does everyone else seem to be able to ignore the elephant in these scenarios? How do they keep from mentioning the bizarre? How do they keep a straight face because it's all just really a bit too funny?

[Image by DecalHappy via etsy]