Utter Failures

Kyle's Secret - A Story About Words I believe that everything happens for a reason. God sends people into our lives who teach us valuable lessons that we would not learn otherwise. That is why I believe Kyle was so special. But to understand the lesson he taught me, you will have to understand Kyle.             I met Kyle when I was nine years old. One day during fourth grade, the door opened and there he was—the new kid. During the first couple of days, we observed more about Kyle.  But it was difficult to get to know him because Kyle was so shy. In fact, he was so quiet that we started wondering about him. We got the impression that Kyle was hiding something—nothing huge or especially exciting perhaps—but we were determined to figure him out.             One of the first things we noticed once Kyle had settled in was that he had a peculiar habit—one not typical of a four...

With me, what you see if pretty much what you get. If I say I like potatoes, then I like potatoes. I don't have a reason to trick you. When you enjoy things, you typically enjoy being around others who enjoy the same things. Therefore, I find myself very often in the company of fellow nerds, which is great. Whether it's a convention or a small night of games at home, I enjoy those times. What I don't enjoy is when someone feels the need to question my sincerity in liking something like this. I won't talk about "fake geeks" here. That's another post for another day. More than once, I've had someone challenge me on something I enjoy -- a battle of facts or some such nonsense. It's the kind of thing that happens when you say "Oh I like that too!" and the response is something along the lines of "Oh yeah, well then prove it by ..." I can't abide that kind of superiority and usually ignore those types of people. God forbid ...

You're in for a treat, readers! My last blog post about the text message fail  inspired Twitter friend  @OlliCrusoe  to share one of his own text message fails. Read, enjoy, and check out his blog (link at the bottom of this post).  One Sunday night, it must have been in 2002, I was sleeping the sleep of the sleepy in the room I shared with 4 other soldiers who spent their military service doing mostly administrative and logistics stuff for our company. Private Long ((name changed)) barged in, angrily shouting “CRUSOE! WHERE IS HE? I’M GONNA KICK HIS ARSE!” Even though I was everything but violent, or competent in brawling, Long wasn’t particularly intimidating to me, so I was more sleepy than worried. What was happening? Rubbing my eyes, I probably said something like: “Whut?” Annoyed grunts from the other two guys already sleeping or dozing. “YOU KNOW WHAT THIS IS ABOUT!” Slowly waking up, kind of getting annoyed but still rather clueless I...

I will preface this story by stating the obvious: we are living happily ever after despite this utter failure. From my perspective, Jeremy and I had met about a month or two before this and had been hanging out with our mutual friends and having a good time getting to know each other. But he hadn't come out and said that he liked me or anything and I was kind of not sure where this was going. I knew he and I had both just come out of relationships that ended badly, his moreso than mine actually, and I wasn't sure I (or he) was ready to be in another relationship. And actually at this point, I had started thinking that maybe I wasn't as interested. We were planning to go with 2 of our friends to see a western-themed Taming of the Shrew (which actually was hilarious). I didn't know this but apparently Jeremy was hoping we would go alone but I had invited our friends because I thought that would be fun. And it was... just not the time Jeremy had hoped for. As a si...

It started out like any other day. I was living in Atlanta and working in Midtown, so I drove into work in my '06 Altima. I worked in the WebMD office there. For my coworkers who read this, this was back when we were in the old office on the other side of Colony Square. I did my work until sometime between 5 and 6. It was probably closer to 5 on this particular day. I got my purse to leave and rummaged for my keys. They were always in there somewhere. I didn't feel them. I checked again. Nothing. I looked in my gym bag. Nothing. I looked all around my desk. Nope. Well, I must have dropped them. I asked the secretary if anyone had turned in any keys. No. A coworker suggested maybe I had dropped them downstairs in the food court area, so I went down and asked the concierge if anything was turned in. No. I went to the parking garage to check around my car. And then I heard it. Heard what? A car engine running. I looked, and saw it. Exhaust from the tailpip...