Sometimes, you just screw up.
Sometimes, you screw up big, and you know it right away.
Like when you announce the wrong best picture winner. Or when you announce the wrong Miss Universe winner.
And sometimes, you screw up on something seemingly small, but still cringe about it years later. Like when you show up to photograph the brother of a firefighter killed on the job, and mix up their names.
Or when you accidentally back up into your cross country coach’s car and leave a dent, in front of the whole team.
Or when you’re six years old, playing your first AAU basketball game, and didn’t realize that you switch baskets at halftime, so when you get the ball and make a run for it, you score your first-ever points in a basketball game for the other team.
Or maybe when you are called to photograph a last-minute assignment for your college newspaper, and when you get home, without importing the photos first, you delete them all off of your card. And then, a year or so later, you do the same thing after telling your teammates how many great photos you took of them at the track meet.
Sometimes, it’s a small thing, and easily fixable.
Like when you forget to put your dish in the dishwasher (again). Or when you drop your pizza on the floor.
And that one time you tried gas station sushi. And another time when, after many previous failed attempts to do so, you still thought it was a good idea to read a book on a road trip while eating a Snickers, and got sick.
Sometimes, you make a mistake that you don’t even cringe about until years later.
Like that guy you dated in high school. Or that other guy you dated in high school.
Or all those vague and sometimes passive-aggressive Facebook statuses you posted about the two of them that now show up in Facebook’s “On This Day” feature. Or just those mundane statuses that you posted about what you’re going to eat for dinner.
Or those few months where you got really into doing your eyebrows, but you were doing them all wrong, and have all these selfies that you thought were so cool at the time to prove it.
And that other time when you thought that you were pretty good at contouring and eyeliner, and wore your handiwork out in public, but it really just looked like someone punched you in exactly the same spot on both sides of your face.
Oh yeah, and those MySpace photos that are still floating around somewhere that you had your brother take in the front yard with your family’s first digital camera, and you’re wearing that awful neon green shirt and posing with your mint green electric guitar. At least you weren’t wearing your oversized My Chemical Romance hoodie and looking all sullen, but don’t worry. Just give it year. It’ll happen.
And that tie-dye phase in middle school, which, looking back, actually was pretty mild and unobtrusive, and actually, whatever happened to that shirt? I take that back; this was not a mistake.
Sometimes, you just mess up. Everybody does – yeah, even PricewaterhouseCooper with the Oscar winners. At least there is no video of my personal flubs… that I know of, anyway.