If you’re one of the lucky 121 people and/or spambots who follow me on Twitter, you are already aware of the fact that I have a hard life. Not extremely hard, though. My house has never burnt down, I was never bullied as a child and I’m relatively healthy, if you discount the half a bag of marshmallows I ate before I started writing this column.
My life is rough in that I don’t know how to perform the most routine vehicle maintenance. My depth perception is not exactly up to par, and I refuse to cut my hair, leading to an incessantly clogged shower drain. It’s _that_ kind of hard.
Of course, many of these sticky situations happen by the luck of my cursed Irish ancestors who probably stole gold from a gaggle (Herd? Colony? Maybe a pride?) of leprechauns. The other spots of trouble, however, are strictly my own doing. Like the time I pulled up too far onto a curb and ripped the bottom of the bumper off my car. Or in sixth grade, when I dropped my student ID in a toilet and was afraid to leave it because whoever found it would know the culprit was me. Or the time I knocked over my huge cup of coffee in the Fine Arts Building with my umbrella — it was barely raining that day, if that gives you a better idea of the kind of things I do to myself.
If the proper term for these happenings in my life is “sticky situations,” then the past few weeks have been the floor of a $2 movie theater after someone (probably me) spilled a gallon-size Mountain Dew slushie.
Where do I even begin? Ah, with the strip club, I suppose.
Yes, readers, I said it. I went to a strip club last weekend. Why, you ask, would a heterosexual female like me go to a gentlemen’s club? Well you see, a few friends and I had coupons. _Coupons._ I went to a strip club because I had a _coupon._
That should have been reason enough to run, not walk, far, far, away from that decision. But no — completely sober, I decided that a coupon, a lack of other plans and the adage of “don’t knock it ’til you’ve tried it” was enough to justify what would soon make me extremely uncomfortable. “It’s a social experiment,” I said. “What’s the worst that could happen?”
Well, Self, a lot of things can happen. The night led to me spending half an hour staring at the floor and giggling with my roommate while drinking the $5 bottle of water I had to buy because it was required that all patrons buy a drink. The water wasn’t even a decent brand.
The good news is the evening at the club only caused mental damage, whereas my latest fuck-up turned my hair blue and clogged my bathtub. And no, those are not independent events.
For some reason unbeknownst to me, I recently decided I wanted to dye my hair darker. Maybe it was all the pumpkin spice lattes in the air, or because fall generally calls for darker colors. During a little trip to the Peace Nook downtown, I stumbled upon a natural hair dye made from henna. I’d never tried this before, but it sounded like fun, and again, “don’t knock it ‘til you’ve tried it.” So on Sunday, I mixed the powdered dye up and applied it.
As it turns out, _henna is made of ground-up leaves_. Ground-up leaves that stain everything in sight and will clog your already hair-filled bathtub drain. And my hair is blue now. I don’t know what I did wrong. Maybe it was the leprechauns.
But after rubbing what was essentially mud all over my head and inadvertently filling my bathtub with black water that may or may not still be draining, I think I’m going to stop experimenting for a while.
Please learn from my mistakes, because I obviously have no ability to do so myself. Remember, you absolutely _can_ knock it before you’ve tried it.
