Six degrees of fail

It is impossible to fail more, or fail harder, than me. Unless you do something like electrocute yourself by blow drying your hair in the shower. Here are my six degrees of fail. They lead up to the ultimate moment of embarrassment.

1st degree of fail - the smudging of the cards.

This is actually my most recent fail too. Let me set the scene for you.

Place: My office

Time: Just after lunch, during food coma

Occurrence: During my usual food coma following lunch, a colleague hands me three cards to sign. I have no idea who the recipients are (I only started at this job a couple of months ago) but still, I try and find a suitably non-awkward birthday message for Jo and John, and a good luck message for Ben.

The pen I am holding attempts to dance out of my hand, poised over the first card. Thinking I'm being clever, I move my wrist quickly out of the way, only to smudge the message that had just been written by someone else, all over the card. Shit. I write my few words and move onto the next one.

Except, I didn't check the underneath of my hand, and it's covered in ink from the smudge in the first card, which is now transferred into the second card, so neither Jo nor John can read half of their birthday messages. Feeling very special I move onto the good luck card, after checking to see if the underneath of my hand is still wet with ink. I don't think it is, but it is and I smudge the third card too. Fail complete.

2nd degree of fail - falling up the stairs.

Every so often I like to disprove gravity by falling up the stairs. On this occasion it was just as I got into work at my previous job, wearing a maxi dress without straps that was too long for a shortass like me. I tripped over my dress on the stairs, fell upwards and the top of my dress fell downwards. Luckily I was wearing one of those bras for people with larger boobs that keeps everything in place even if you're bouncing on a trampoline with a pogo stick, but unluckily I badly damaged my knee and still bear the scar of my fail to this day.

3rd degree of fail - locking myself out of my own uni room on the night before a major exam.

What's the worst thing you can possibly do, the night before a major exam? How about locking yourself out of your room where all the notes are? Yup, I did this. I slept on my friend's couch, reading the one book I could get out of the library, and just scraped through the exam the next day. 

4th degree of fail - being walked in on by an insane cleaner

We had a crazy cleaner at university that talked your ear off and named her daughter Sparrow. She would let herself into our bedrooms without asking. One day I was in the bedroom and not alone. She walked in and conducted an entire conversation with herself while painstakingly dusting every single object. Possibly one of the most painful half hours of my life. 

But wait... it gets worse.

5th degree of fail - ordering a custom made dress from china that turned out to be the colour of old mattress

I needed a dress for a special occasion, and I hate shopping on the high street. I thought I'd be clever and order one online, from an ebay shop that operated out of China. The woman asked me what colour it should be, and I said ivory. I told her the exact shape I wanted. Waited 6 weeks, it was getting close to the date I needed it and I was worried it wouldn't arrive. The dress finally arrived...

.......

It was the colour of old mattress. It looked like a mattress had vomited up a square of chiffon.

Off to Debenhams I went, with a much reduced budget.

And finally...

6th degree of fail - the epic, ultimate embarrasment

Long before I met Larry, at university, I had a huge crush on a boy from my dorm. Every time he walked into a room, I salivated. 'Ooooh' was all I could say. I drove my friends crazy talking about him, and how I thought he had maybe looked at me in the canteen line last Tuesday. When he walked into the uni bar, I swear he walked in slow motion. Don't even get me started on the time I saw him in tennis shorts.

So, eventually, little by little, I got up the courage to say more to him than 'uh.' 'Ummm'. 'Do you know... where the toilet is?' We became sort of awkward friends. I saw awkward because every time I saw him I would blush, and I found it very hard to look him in the eye. I think his friends thought I was 'special' and that he was taking pity on the simple girl with the crazy hair.

Then came prom.

I got dressed up in what I thought at the time was a totally fashionable, awesome dress, and I did my hair to make it look less like a nest full of ravens. I turned up at the prom, with one friend on one arm and another on the other, ready to do battle with my nerves and make a bee line for the guy. Turns out I should never, ever attempt to walk in heels. First thing I do upon entering the room is slip and skid ALL THE WAY OVER TO HIM AND LAND AT HIS FEET. Yes, you read that right, I actually LANDED AT HIS FEET. My dress was all rucked up and my face was bright red. The guy sitting next to him got up to make room for me. I couldn't look him in the eye. I got up, sat down for a moment, lip trembling.

'Well...' he said.

That was it. I couldn't bear it any longer. I  ran out of my university prom at full speed, fail shoes in my hand. 

And that's the story of the ultimate fail. 

And that's why you aren't half as fail as you thought you were.