F*** My Life!

"Why do bad things happen to me?" is a question we’ve all asked ourselves at some point. Early this morning when I realized that I had left my wallet at a bar last night, I asked myself the same thing.

Losing a wallet is always a pain in the A, however this time it was an extremely unfortunate experience. I had closed out my bank account earlier that day and didn’t have time to put the money (2 month’s rent) in my new bank account. My friend Lil and I went out a sports bar to watch my Alma Mater NC State whoop our rival’s (UNC) roody poo behinds in basketball and I ended up leaving my wallet there.

Not only did it have crisp $100 bills folded tightly into my cute “lunch money” change purse, it also contained my library card, ID, Starbucks and Lush gift cards that I had gotten for my birthday and my company credit card inside.

Feeling crappier than a porta potty at a chili cookoff, I asked one of my Jesus freak* friends why does it seem like bad things always happen to good people. Her response was, “The biblical answer is that there aren’t any “good” people in the world. The Bible makes it pretty clear that all of us are tainted by sin.”

It’s all fine and dandy if we’re going with the argument that empirically nobody is “good”, but there are definitely some mischievous mother f-er’s out there and I’m not one of them. I don't deserve this mess. On a scale of 1 (Heaven sent angel) to 10 (Satan and Rosemary’s demon baby spawn) I’ve got to be at least a 3 or 4. That’s accounting for things like stealing gum as a child, cheating on my chemistry homework in high school and tricking my younger brother into pouring Sweet-N-Low straight into his mouth by telling him its better than regular sugar because it’s in a pretty pink packet. Sucker.

I feel like everything will be going fine and then BOOM goes the dynamite. All at once I'm hit with unfavorable circumstances and left standing there asking myself WHY ME?! A few of the many unfortunate events I’ve recently lived through include:

• On a business trip to Los Angeles I swipe my debit card and it’s declined. Call up the bank and they tell me my card has been compromised and thus canceled. Had to borrow money from my co-worker for the trip.
• In the middle of an audition for a gig my bra strap popped and my boob came bouncing out of my dress. Well hello to you Mr. Interviewer!
• Someone backed into the front of my car, bending the grill on my Passat and making the chrome plated VW ornament fall off and then they took it! Either that or some hoodlums just plain stole the emblem off of my car by hitting the grill with a hammer, perhaps as a part of gang initiation or in hopes to create a killer Halloween costume.

                         

• In Louisville, KY on Black Friday some thieves stole my passport and company credit card. I was outta cash and had to do all kind of inhumane things to get through security at the airport just to fly back home. A few days later my boss calls and asks if I can go on a last minute all expense paid work trip to Canada. YES, I am talking about the land of maple flavored cookies, ice hockey and poutine, otherwise known as America Jr. Couldn't go, had no passport. 
• For an entire week in Greenville, NC my phone had no cell phone reception. I had negative bars! Went to T-mobile and they couldn't help me. They told me I needed to buy a new phone and a mansion in Idaho too. Then early in the morning on the way to the airport my rental car broke down right next to a tobacco field. Had no reception and couldn't phone for help. After waiting 2 hours, highway patrol found me, called a tow truck that took another hour to come tow the car and then yet another hour to drive me to the airport. Missed my plane and the airline charged me $150 to reschedule the flight. Bitches

When it comes down to it you can’t allow yourself to wallow in your understandable sadness. I know this is easier said than done and I’m not saying you shouldn’t be upset about whatever misfortune you've encountered, but realize that you can’t change the past. Stop reliving the moment in your head ad nauseum saying, “if only I hadn’t…” because it’s already too late. Instead think about what you do have and count your blessings. I mean literally write that shit down!

   1.  I’m alive! Yeah things go wrong, and seemingly all at once but I still woke up today and hopefully I’ll wake up tomorrow. That means I have another chance to fix anything that I fucked up yesterday.

     2.   I have all of my teeth – May not seem like a big deal but I’ve seen more than a few snaggle toothed people walking around lately and I’m glad I have all 32 of my pearly whites.

   3.   I have a clean, warm apartment - It’s the middle of winter and I’m pretty sure I read on EveryBlock that they found a bum frozen into a block of ice in my Chicago neighborhood. It may not be a mansion in Idaho but I have a comfy place to lay my head with cable, video games, Netflix and Hulu Plus! I’m living the good life (even if I don’t have HBO and have to stream True Blood from the internet).

   4.   I have friends and family that love and care about me or at least pretend to for our mutual benefit.  

Also important, if you don’t believe in luck, don’t expect to get lucky. To be honest, even though I think I have abnormally bad luck at times, a lot of good things have happened to me too. When my janky rental car broke down next to that tobacco field and I missed my plane, Avis gave me a $100 gift certificate towards a car rental and a free Megabus trip. And guess what?! Some rich trust fund Lincoln Park kid turned in my wallet at the bar with all of the contents still inside! They probably looked at my two months rent and thought, this chump change, I can't even buy a round of drinks and line of coke for my friends with this.

I know people who are always hemming and hawing like Mr. Ed over how nothing good ever happens to them. Maybe it’s because you don’t think anything good should happen to you and you end up making your life an unlucky, uneventful reality. It’s kinda like the lotto; you’ve gotta be in it, to win it.

*Jesus Freak – for my purposes, a positive term of endearment for people who have given themselves to God. They are B-A-N-A-N-A-S about the Lord and spreading his word, they attend church regularly and often read and/or quote the Bible. You may currently see them sporting WWJD bracelets. Like in 2013!

Deux Degrees of Separation

So one day I’m taking a mid-day nap on my fluffy couch when I hear my phone ringing. I wake up in just enough time to miss the call and notice it’s a Chicago number I’ve never seen before.

One of the main rules of working in the promo industry is always answer your phone since a lot of times gigs are on a first come first serve basis. If a client can't reach you they may give your job to the next person who actually does answer their phone call. On this fateful day, following the always-answer/return-phone-calls rule lead to an interesting situation. I immediately called back the number that started with the popular 773 Chicago area code and the conversation went like this:

“Hi I just got a call from this number”

“Is this TK?”

I cleared my throat and put on my professional work voice. “Yes. With whom am I speaking?”

“This is Phil.”

Thinking that maybe I had worked a program with Phil or had applied for a freelance job that I didn’t remember, I tried to jog my memory. When I really couldn’t remember him I thought it would be better to just ask this Phil character who he is so that we could get the conversation over with and I could resume my napping.

“Uh, hi Phil. I apologize but where do I know you from?”

“Well it’s a long story.”

Not what you want to hear when you really just want to go back to sleep.

“You see I’m thinking that we met at a club in downtown Chicago. Maybe near Dearborn?"

Just so you know, I don’t hang out at any clubs in downtown Chicago. In the 4 years I’ve lived here I might have been to 3 actual clubs. I feel like I’m past my clubbing days and even when I was “of clubbing age” it wasn't really my thing. I’m more of a house party, swanky lounge or warehouse event type gal.  

Feeling increasingly skeptical, I reply, “Uh huh.”

Phil continues with, “I had your number saved in my phone. It said TK and had four stars next to it. I know you must be a really hot lady if I put four stars next to your name.”

I wonder if he means 4 out of 5 stars. What grading scale are we talking about here?

“I must have had your number for at least a year but I dropped my phone in water one day and I lost my numbers for a while.”

Even though this phone call is weird, I figure if nothing else I can blog about it. Look at me, always hustling. 

“Yea I hear that if you put your phone in rice it will dry it out and then you can use it again”

“Oh I should try that next time. I just recently turned the phone back on, but I can’t remember what you look like. Could you describe yourself to me?”

Okay, phone call just took a turn for the worse.  

“Actually I’m really sleepy. Your call woke me up. Maybe we can chat later?” 

Plan was to save his number as DO NOT ANSWER and block all text messages from him.

“Oh sorry about waking you up. Well I’ma let you go…”

Thank God

“…but I’m 33 years old, about 6ft tall and 200lbs. I’m Black and Creole with wavy hair. I know 200 sounds like a lot but I work out. What about you?”

This time I’m mildly interested in where he is going with this. He obviously thinks being Black and Creole is going to tip the scales in his favor or give him some kind of sexy guy advantage with me. IT WOULD NOT. Not because I have anything against Black/Creole guys because racially, I'm an equal opportunity employer. My question is, who calls someone out of the blue, after supposedly having their number for a year just to talk? The statute of limitations has definitely passed on being able to call me back. However, given this random new information, I don’t hang up right away.

“You know, I’m brown skinned, medium sized, black hair with brown eyes.” 

And so are 3.1 million black girls in the United States.

“Would you say that you have a big booty?”

My mistake for not hanging up earlier.

“It’s not huge or anything. But I really need to get back to sleep.”

I don't even try to hide my disgust. Weirdo.

“Well maybe we can go out tonight around 7 to Starbucks. We really need to meet back up”

Am I being punked? Negro I don’t know you! We have NEVER met!

“I don’t know about that. I work the night shift. Gotta catch them Z’s.”

“Well do you have an intelligent phone? You could send me a photo and I could send you one too.”

Intelligent phone? Umm, you just proved your intelligence right then and there. I’m not even making this up. He really said that!

“Nah, I have one of those old school flip phones. All it does it ring. Listen Phil it was nice talking to you but I really have to go. Have a good day!”

And a good life creeper.

So I call up my friend Lil (whom you may remember from here) and tell her all about my twilight zone convo with Phil. Lil is a pretty good sport about things and she wanted to see what he looked like. She suggests that I send him a pic of her and ask for one back. Okay, cool. As long as it’s not my photo I don’t care. I don’t want some strange guy who got my OUT OF STATE phone number from God knows where, masturbating to my photo on his intelligent phone. I send him a photo of Lil asking for one in return. This is what I get.

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Wait for it

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Oh it gets better

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..

WTF?

O_o Now I really wanna know where he got my number! At least after seeing that beat up flip phone from 2003 I know why he called it an “intelligent phone.” Real talk, if I were going to give my number out to a guy, it wouldn’t be this guy! I showed my Mom his photos and she almost spit her Cheerios out laughing. Even If I were drunk and out of my mind I still have standards. I’m a 4 star girl after all.

I’ve given out my number maybe once in the last year to a cute Puerto Rican guy that worked at Marshall’s. We made eye contact from across the store, chatted as he rang up my items and he told me silly jokes about customers. I can easily fall for a cute guy with a great sense of humor any day. I went out on a limb, gave him my number and he never called me back. Maybe he dropped his phone in water and I can expect a phone call in a year, but personally I like to think that he got hit by a car. And now I obviously can’t go back to my neighborhood Marshall’s because it would be way too hard to deal with him not being there. Tragedy.

Anyways, as far as this Phil business goes, a funny thing happened on the way home from the supermarket the other day. I’ll tell you what went down in Part II of Deux Degrees of Separation.