Why We Can't Have Nice Things: A Brief History

1996: I was convinced that it was a slide. To my three-year-old self, that was the only obvious explanation for the long, flat rectangle lying against our couch. I believed that it was an indoor slide, and even when my parents told me that it was not, I figured that they were lying to keep it a surprise for me. Even at the tender age of three, I psychoanalyzed like none other. I climbed onto the couch, positioned myself at the top of my new toy, and began to slide. For one glorious second I felt the freedom of controlled gravity...and then I felt it crack. Apparently, my baby fat was too much for the glass curio case, the true identity of my slide. My parents, especially my dad, were beside themselves when they saw the imprint I had made on his expensive rectangle. If I remember correctly, I believe that I was yelled at for a few minutes, but otherwise waddled off freely.

1998: It happened during a Dollar Store outing. I was with my mother and the semi-recent invader, my sister. She was two, I was five, and our mother had her hands full with the both of us and whatever George Washington approved junk she was buying. I don't know how in the world of China-made plastic I found actual China (probably more like porcelain), but I did, and I broke it. My latest victim was a small bell with an Irish four leaf clover on it. Interestingly, I did not break the bell itself, just the inside part that made it more than an oddly shaped paperweight. I don't remember exactly how I was able to accomplish this, but my sister has assured me that I was playing it when I wasn't supposed to. I am sure that, at the time, I had convinced myself and everybody else that I could enjoy this bell without muting it forever. Of course, I was wrong, and my mother was out one dollar. I do not recall if I was given a "time out" when we got home, probably because I have blocked out my memory of every time I was isolated to the Pink Stairs of Doom. However, I know that we kept the bell, useless as it was, and it's lying somewhere around our house, even today.

2005: A veterinarian's pets should be house trained, but ours aren't. By the time I was twelve, I had already lost count of the amount of accidents staining our pink carpets. On one day that would forever go down in Geller history, I walked downstairs to find a very large accident in our dining room. Unlike other accidents, this one would not be fixed with a simple clean-up. In an act of true brilliance, I ran upstairs to get the Clorox 2. We were out of the bleach for colors. Thus, in an act of true idiocy, I grabbed the regular Clorox bleach. I did not really understand how bleach worked at the time, so my thought process was as follows: Even though bleach is for whites, not colors, if I pour it on the pink carpet, the color will stay because it's stationary not sloshing around in a washing machine. I sincerely thought that this was how bleach worked. It only became apparent to me, a few hours later, that I was very, very wrong. Not only were there two huge patches of white on the pink carpet, but some of the fibers within this patches had completely eroded. My mother was upset by my stupidity, until I explained to her my intentions and my reasoning. Thankfully, this good deed did go unpunished. The immediate solution to this eyesore was strategically placing a rug over it. A few years later, my family took final care of the problem by replacing our pink carpets with hardwood floors. Our new floors now look much nicer than our dingy carpets, and I'm pretty sure that my mishap actually increased the value of our house. My parents have yet to thank me officially for prompting them to this home improvement, but I'm sure that I will feel their gratitude in my inheritance.

2010: I think that the worst thing about this one is that I did it twice. My garage door and I did not see eye to eye. Or rather, my eyes did not see that the garage door was still closed. That's right, I backed into my garage door. I was seventeen and had had my license for less than a year. Some days, I still wonder how I passed what I considered to be the most difficult of all exams. The first time, I was leaving for school, and I was late. Thinking that I had already opened the garage door, I began to back up. The sudden scraping sound alerted me that I done something wrong. Luckily, there wasn't any real damage done to the door, so I was still able to get it up, get my car out, and get my ass to school on time. The second time, the garage door was less resilient. I think I caught it off guard, because after the first time, I think it really trusted me that I would not do it again. This time, the incident occurred in the afternoon, and again I was late. Technically, it was not I but my sister who was making the both of us late to dance class. Already stressed out and angry at her for being unprepared, I was distracted by my own resentment as I began backing up. This time, I didn't realize what was happening until it was too late. The garage door was severely deformed, and we were going to be more late than ever. I attempted to get the garage door to lift up, but it was to no avail. The door just made a wheezing, dying sound, and I got the hint to stop pressing the button. With some strategic maneuvering, I was able to get the car out of the garage through a different garage door, so we did arrive at dance class basically on time. When my father found out, he was none too pleased with me, or my sister. Of course, since I was the one driving, I did get the brunt of the blame. In a few weeks, the garage door was replaced, but my car and I were quarantined to the driveway. Our identification as persona non grata has continued to the present, and my car still stands outside the garage door today.