Unless someone has walked a mile in my shoes....

.... they shouldn't suppose they know what I can or can not do, physically! I have to keep telling myself to speak-up in situations where other people don't realize what my limitations are.

I have blogged before concerning my 'fear' of not fitting. I was worried about the plane seats, the taxis, the chairs in the board room I was meeting in, etc...

I have a story to tell about my trip to France which will drive this point home.

The third day I was there, after working 11 hours the group who was in charge of our visit, planned a 'tour' of a new production facility which they were going to move into the next week.

The facility has a 'controlled' environment area where you must 'gown-up' to prevent product contamination. I know from the start I would have problems there (no gown to fit me.. etc).. so I said I would skip the tour and continue working. I didn't want to outright say 'you probably won't have a gown to fit my '@@# ass'. They insisted that I go, so I went.

First of all, the walk there was over half a mile (I'm not quite ready for that type of exercise yet), and I walked it, struggling to keep up with the group and silently sweating my ass off.

When we got there, we couldn't find the person who was going to let us in for the tour, so I had some time to stand, catch my breath and cool down (and mop off all the sweat). We finally got in and went into the gowning area.

Just as I thought, I couldn't find a 'paper throw-away' gown to fit. So I said so (embarrassing event number 1). They said 'we'll figure something out', and they did. They asked me to put on 'coat' on forward, and one 'backward', so my clothes would be fully covered.

Of course, I complied. What I or they didn't realize was they had just created the perfect 'sweat box' for me. I was already overheated, now I was locked into clothing that didn't let my body vent.. and I had to wear a 'bonnet' over my head to, so no heat out that way either.

So, the tour commenced. The building was 5 stories and about a third of a block long. After about 30 minutes walking around, we stopped (thank God), to wait for someone and when we stopped, I noticed there was water 'pouring' out of the sleeves of the lab coat and puddling on the floor (embarrassment number 2). I stood there, moving around every two or three minutes, as to not let the puddles get too large. Finally someone said 'Don' are you ok?

I said to the guy, "I know that you are testing all the aspects of the building, but unless you want to test the emergency response systems because you a big, fat, sweaty, exhausted man passed-out on the floor, I think I'd better go back to the gowning area and take off this sauna suit". If I had gone on any further I would have passed out.

The moral to the story is, I shouldn't let what other people think of me, or what they think I can do, overrule my common sense. I should have insisted I didn't want to go and not worried about what they thought. LESSON LEARNED (the hard way)