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Don’t you just love talking about mistakes—especially when they’re not yours?
Admit it.
There’s something strangely comforting about other people’s blunders. I think part of it stems from relief. Relief we’re not the only ones who goof and relief that at least this time it wasn’t us.
Now, that’s not to say we don’t feel bad for the bungler.
In fact, depending on the particular faux pas, we may empathize a great deal.
(And to clarify—I’m speaking more about those egg-on-your-face moments rather than those laced with harmful intent.)
Since we’re dishing about mistakes today, why don’t I clear the air and tell you about a few of mine?
Sound like fun? Pull up a chair then—here we go!
Where shall I begin?
Shortly after my husband and I were married, we scheduled a trip to Puerto Vallarta.
A full week of nothing but sun, sand, seafood, and surf. Delightful, to be sure.
Our upscale hotel was located in a prime spot on the beach. A salmon-colored gem swathed in glorious bougainvillea, this place was sublime. A top-notch restaurant, two swimming pools, quaint shops, and a host of other amenities. It was wonderful.
And like any young love birds, hubby and I were excited to get away from the rest of the world for a while, unwind, and revel in just being together.
Never mind that pesky window washer who lowered himself down to our “private” balcony on Day Two of our trip.
“I no be long, Senor,” he called through the opened sliding doors.
Oh. My. Word.
The day was off to an interesting start.
And it got better.
For lunch, we decided to be adventurous. We ate at a cozy, open-air market/fresh seafood restaurant a few blocks down the street from our hotel. (I know what you’re thinking. Open-air market. “Fresh” seafood. Mexico. And you would be right, of course.)
“Here, taste this.” I offered darling husband a bite of my crab salad. “Does that taste right to you?”
Hubby rolled the bite around on his tongue for a moment before swallowing. “No, dear. I don’t think it does.”
We left the “restaurant” without finishing the crab salad and headed back to our hotel about three blocks away.
As we walked, I began to feel queasy. So did my husband.
A few hours later, we were thrust into the belly of ….. .
Food poisoning.
For two solid days, we endured endless torment. Nausea. Vomiting. Diarrhea. Dehydration.
It came and went in cycles. I thought we would die.
As I exited (crawled from) the bathroom, my husband entered. And so the hours ticked by.
I mentally kicked myself for eating raw crab salad. And for asking hubby to try it. In Mexico–at an open-air market–a dive–for Pete’s sake!
We should have known better! Who makes that kind of stupid mistake?
Why, a pair of twenty-somethings with stars-in-their-eyes (of course)! A young couple who throws caution to the wind because they’re too invincible to get sick. Or think.
I prayed God would deliver us and just allow us to live until we could board our flight at the end of the week. And I prayed there would be more than one tiny cubicle of a bathroom to handle any…residual after-effects of our foray into foreign eateries.
Well—God blessed, folks.
And speaking of mistakes…
There was the time I decided to save time (as a new mama) by washing a few baby clothes with some of our whites.
No worries. I used the special baby detergent so our precious newborn wouldn’t get a rash.
Hubby’s pink underwear was a small price to pay for fresh, clean duds. I mean—has anyone not done this at one time or another?
Except back then, the paycheck was smaller. So we had to wait about a month before purchasing more undergarments.
My husband never reprimanded or scolded.
In fact, we made a joke of it.
Still, because of his grace, I felt bad.
I made a mistake, but it taught me something, too.
A little tolerance within marriage goes a long way.
Not to leave this stone unturned…
Many years ago, I sat in a writing class. As the speaker closed , she asked for questions.
“Now, come on. Don’t be shy, people.”
Here was my chance. I poked my hand up.
“Yes, you over there by the water pitcher. Cindy, is it?”
I smiled. She remembered my name. Cue the spotlight!
“Yes, I was just wondering… Well, what’s a synopsis anyway?”
Before the speaker had a chance to reply, a well-dressed lady—a professional—sitting across from me sighed—very audibly.
“You don’t know what a synopsis is? And you’re a writer?” She patted her lovely, high dollar coif and made a point of glancing at the time. “Oh, those are for amateurs.”
Idle chatter ceased and the room grew silent.
Obviously, I’d asked a silly question. I willed the floor to open and swallow me whole.
As the “professional” gathered her things and prepared to leave (as if she didn’t have the time or inclination to wait around for the speaker’s answer) I pondered my mistake.
Was the mistake that I genuinely didn’t know what a synopsis was… or was the mistake that I asked?
To her credit, the speaker that day was very gracious. She answered in a way that helped me understand what a synopsis was and what a true professional wasn’t.
The takeaway that day? It never hurts to ask!
And something I’ve learned through my own bobbles and missteps…
There’s an upside to mistakes!
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Okay—let’s have it. Have you made any mistakes lately?
What did you learn?
Did you happen to catch the “mistake” with the tiles above?
***
PLEASE SHARE
From blunders to missteps. What we can learn and why there’s an upside:
I pray you have a joy-filled weekend!
Blessings Always,
Comments 4
You have a way with humor, Cindy!
Mistakes…hmmm. Yesterday I knelt on a rusty nail. It took some effort to pull it out of my knee.
That was after I tried to get a bit more use out of a grinder with a short inside it…if I jiggled the cord, it would run.
It caught fire in my hands, as the wheel was spinning merrily away, close to things I didn’t want to nick.
My biggest mistake was made when I was eighteen. I had just learned to fly, and wanted to fly LOW. So I chose a river as my route, forgetting that people like to string things like phone lines and power lines across rivers.
I was reminded by the set of 250,000 transmission lines through which I flew. Bright flash, loud noise, windshield shattering and cutting my throat…and the plane didn’t even have the courtesy of exploding in a glorious fireball, so I had to fly the darn thing back to the airfield and land it. With one working brake (you steer on the ground with the help of individual wheelbrakes).
The FAA was pretty nice about it. The investigator’s comment was, “You’re an idiot, but I think you’ve learned something. Go home, and go flying again tomorrow.”
I always said that I wanted to be a pilot when I grew up, never realizing the two goals were mutually exclusive.
Author
Andrew, my goodness! What a life you’ve lived! And that incident when you were—eighteen?—you should use that in a book. Wow!
About your luck with drills, grinders, nails, etc…. YOU need paramedics on stand-by! For goodness sake, be careful. (And you do have a bit of a way with humor, as well!)
Actually, my training goes a bit beyond paramedic level. I’ve done minor surgery on others – and on myself, under field-expedient conditions. Which, being accident-prone, is a good skill to have!
I’ve tried to write about the powerline thing, but realized I couldn’t, for two reasons.
One is that if described factually, it’s so over-the-top as to be unbelievable. Avoiding that leads one into the ‘Hemingway Trap’ of romantic understatement – Hemingway’s description of combat are absurd in that way, since combat is neither romantic nor understated.
The other reason is that I’ve been involved with aviation for my whole life, and I’m really to close to it to be able to write for a lay audience.
Oh, and my run of luck continued yesterday, with some hot welding slag popping into my ear, and I couldn’t move to shake it out. But no worries – if fell clean through and out the other ear without touching anything on the way.
I suppose I could add one last week, but it was more of an accident, drilling into the big joint of my right thumb with a 1/4″ drill. Got the tendon, so I now have only one ‘working’ thumb (unless I’m hitch-hiking – it sticks straight out). Time and PT should make it better.
But this may be par for the course for a chap who has used his head as a hammer. Yes, really, to knock wooden wedges in to align concrete formwork when I’d forgotten my ‘real’ hammer. (I was fifty feet up on scaffolding and didn’t want to climb down and back up.)
But I really have to give the Big Error Prize to Tammy, one of our Pit Bulls. She decided to raid a box of Milk-Bones, got the box stuck on her head, and dashed around knocking over just about everything any everyone.
She’s lucky I don’t have a video camera, otherwise her embarrassment would be both total and Internet-wide.