Main character energy I could do without

I love a good story with an outrageous plot twist. However, there are times I wouldn’t mind a few less dramatic turns in my real life. Over the years, I’ve wracked up some pretty wild stories, most of which could pair easily with a laugh track. Some people might call it bad luck. Others, a series of good stories. Me? It’s starting to feel like main character energy, that I could live without.

I started to notice this trend in college. Even then, my roommate pointed out, “this kind of stuff only happens to you.”

Main character kind of stuff

That might’ve been the time I saw a deer get struck by lightning. At the time, I was driving back to college for the semester. On my drive, the skies turned suddenly and I was white-knuckling through a torrential downpour. Because I had zero visibility, I pulled over to wait out the rain. As I did, I saw a deer wander into the clearing next to the car. The next thing I knew, there was a blinding flash of light, followed by a twitching corpse and my own vomit covering my body. Two hours later I walked into our apartment, still shaking and horrified, and probably pretty smelly.

Once, I had a horrible cough but didn’t want to risk missing any basketball practice, so I put myself on a constant rotation of cough drops and Gatorade. A couple weeks later, my older brother took me to the dentist, where I found out I went from zero cavities in my life to 14 all at once! I had to call my parents, who were on vacation in Australia, to tell them.

I’ve suffered through my fair share of cat-calls, pick-up lines, and unsolicited approaches. I have the laughter-inducing SOS text chains to prove it.

During my senior year of high school, a scorned dance team coach tried to tank my capstone presentation three years after I quit the dance team because I had too many extracurriculars on my plate and was on the verge of crisis. (Don’t worry: I told my civics teacher what I suspected and she remedied the only F in my pile of A+ reports by ripping it up!)

Recently, I realized that I had been applying a hair product to my hair incorrectly. I’d been using a leave-in product after every shower, to smooth and strengthen my hair. But when I ran out and got a new bottle, there was a mix-up: I received a totally different product. It looked identical, and I didn’t even think to double-check. The replacement product was a mask (put on for 10 minutes, then rinse). But I had no idea! So I’ve been leaving glops on my hair without rinsing, for MONTHS. The build-up was insane.

Back in my softball days, there were countless silly goofy moments: times I was flipped, hit, taken out, charged, etc. etc.

I (vaguely) recall going out to a line dancing bar. Days later, I realized that I was drugged—randomly from a stack of water cups by the water fountain.

When I was 19, I lived through a hellish day when my best friend and my boyfriend’s shared grandpa (yup, Chad is my childhood best friend’s cousin) passed away and I had to tell both of them…as I was on my way to her wedding. On Thanksgiving morning, traveling to Alaska by myself. (It’s still traumatic for me, lol.)

Remember when we moved cross-country and the moving company we used was actually fraudulent? And then, when they threatened to hold our stuff hostage if we didn’t pay $1k per day?

The day before signing the papers for our house, our lender called to say we needed to file our taxes in order to close. This was after being reassured that it wouldn’t be necessary, back when we’d asked months prior, and not having our filing cabinets on hand (thanks to the moving company debacle). We made it work, through some combination of an all-nighter and the holy spirit.

Did you see my recent wiffle ball whoopsie, involving the most ridiculous tag-up and a hyper-extended knee?

Anyway, as you can see, there are patterns in place here.

These are the kind of events that really wouldn’t even pass in a standard piece of fiction; it’d be too much for the main character to go through—enough so that it’d be unrealistic. Yet, here we are. The Story of My Life is full of countless stranger-than-fiction moments, hopefully contributing to really, really strong character development and a fantastic sense of humor.

The latest

One of the latest displays of unwarranted main character energy was pretty horrifying, even for me. There I was, eating a delicious slice of pizza, when I realized, mid-bite, that I was missing half my tooth.

Back in high school, a friend threw me a water bottle at the beginning of basketball practice. It slipped right through my fingers and into my front tooth, breaking it cleanly in half. I got to the dentist right away, had to wear a mouth guard for a week (lol), and walked away with a filling that lasted me from age 15 to 28. That is, until a rouge piece of pizza took it right out. And, that filling? Gone. Swallowed—only realized after the fact.

Look—I’m vain enough that having half a front tooth is a major problem. And waiting over 12 hours for the dentist to call me back to make an appointment was pure torture.

Luckily, the dentist got me in as soon as possible, saving the day with a crown. They fixed my tooth, rehabilitated my smile, and restored my dignity.

And with this adventure, another chapter of my main character energy (that I could live without) story closed, thankfully.

In the meantime, let’s cool it with the plot-twists. Or, at the very least, let’s keep the next one away from my face, thankyouverymuch.

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