1. Being born
This time of year always makes me question my existence while I’m buried under mountains of papers, exams and readings, but I promise that my birth itself really was a terrible event. For one thing, I had the umbilical cord wrapped around my neck three times for some indiscernible reason. And, despite spending nine months in the womb, my body somehow forgot to form the little holes that your tears come out of. You’d think it wouldn’t be that big of a deal because crying is such a nuisance, but it turns out you actually need tears, or else you’ll spend the first year of your life in and out of the doctor’s office with eye infections until they put you under and poke little holes into your tear ducts. I’ve honestly never heard of this happening to anyone else, and I really feel like it was a sign for the way the rest of my life was going to go.
2. The kindergarten accident
The best day of the year in elementary school was field day. There was no learning to be done, and you got to play outside all day. There were ice pops, tricycle races and the biggest slip ‘n slide I’ve ever seen to this day. Kindergarten-me was very excited and had made it through the entire day enjoying the freedom, maybe a little too much. At the very end of the day, I managed to trip on the sidewalk, of all things, and break a finger. Which one, you ask? My middle finger, of course. Irony has been coming for me since day one.
3. The missing backpack
For my graduation present, my grandmother told me she’d take me to Paris. I was ecstatic, and the trip went really well. That is, everything went well until the end of the trip, when I somehow managed to forget a backpack full of medications and souvenirs in a taxi. What ensued was an hour-long endeavor to find my backpack in a taxi bay full of hundreds of cabs. With my minimal French, I somehow managed to locate the security tower, but of course, it wasn’t open. I walked into the cabbie café, and who was sitting at the first table? My taxi driver. This story actually has a happy ending.
4. The bike cop
I’m not proud to say that I’ve been pulled over a few times, but I’ve only ever gotten one ticket. It was for having an expired inspection sticker, and it was expunged from my driving record. So why is this such an embarrassing story? Well, the only cop to ever give me a ticket wasn’t just a regular cop. It was a bike cop. I also managed to get pulled over on my first date with a boy I really liked. The universe is out to get me.
5. Thank goodness for braces
For some reason my body thinks it’s a good idea to get into accidents. For example,
I tripped up the stairs twice in one day just a week ago. But during my freshman year of high school, my body decided to take it way too far when I almost lost three of my teeth from another kid’s forehead hitting my mouth during gym. I sat as a bloody, drooling mess for over an hour until I could be put into emergency oral surgery to put the teeth back in place. The only thing I remember is the surgeon telling me I was built Ford tough, or at least my braces were. Thanks, I guess? The moral of the story is to avoid gym and always get braces because they might one day save your teeth.
6. Why did we stop?
I promise that I can drive relatively well, but when it comes to car common sense, I don’t have much. I got into school here, so I probably have some smarts, but it seems that my brain organized all of its memory storage into keeping up with random facts instead of remembering to take care of my car. I’ll also let this serve as a warning to all of my readers — do not ignore dash warning lights. That’s how I almost killed my first car — by letting the oil get so low that the engine died while I was in a left turn lane.
7. The unluckiest car in the world
My current car is a 2008 Nissan Rogue. She’s electric blue and lovingly named Rally Sally. She’s not very powerful or cool, but she does have heated seats. She also has a long-running bad luck streak. So far I have popped a tire, had my windshield cracked, lost use of the transmission while driving, been rear-ended on the highway and completely ruined the air conditioning by leaving my windows down in a rainstorm. Every time I get in I have no idea what will happen next, but I pray I get from point A to point B.
8. What’s that smell?
I don’t know if you’ve realized from reading this article, but I am so cool. So cool that I have built a gigantic potato cannon that’s powered by hair spray and a grill igniter. That bad boy can launch a potato very far, emitting only a loud bang and a puff of fire. But for a potato cannon, you need potatoes. So you buy potatoes, and you put them in your car and you shoot your potato gun. But in all the excitement, you forgot to take the giant bag of potatoes out of your car. In the summer. With the windows up. What resulted from this course of action was a terrible, pungent smell that I could not figure out the source of — that is, until I opened up my tailgate. If you’ve never experienced rotten potato juice, then you can’t imagine how lucky you are.
9. The wallet incident
Imagine you’re me and you get off work and decide to go grocery shopping. You get to Kroger and search everywhere for your wallet, but it seems to be missing. Where could it be? Well, I’ll tell you where it was. In my excitement to leave after a seven-hour shift, I managed to throw it away –– as in I put it in a trashcan. Nothing has been quite a humbling experience as having to go back to my job the next day and rifle through the trash to find the wallet.
10. The Phone-a-Thon
I hope the people who read my Top 10 articles like them. My mom does, at least. It turns out there are people that don’t, and I had to learn it the hard way. Cut to The Cavalier Daily’s phone bank fundraiser. We all had an assigned list of call-ees, and one of my friends called a guy that decided now wasn’t the right time to donate. Why? Because of an article I wrote, titled Top 10 places to hook up on Grounds — I was in a writing slump, let me live. That was his only reason. It was clearly a satirical article, but apparently being funny isn’t enough to get you donations, and I spent the whole day feeling terrible. But I provided a laugh for the rest of my colleagues, and that’s the important part. Right?
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