Day of misfortune.

December 26th has never been a great day for me. For some reason I seem to have an incredible string of bad events that have happened in my life all on the 26th. When I was very little my "girlfriend" told me that she didn't like me anymore. It broke my little heart and I was distraught! What ever was I to do! Well I probably went and played with my Lego's, or He-Man action figures. Either way, I think that was the first instance of badness occurring on that day, and if I had known what it held in store for me I would always have slept in and never left my bed on that day. Further December 26th's have been pretty bad, here's a quick list of some of them.

1) My friend once committed suicide when I was living in Florida. He wasn't one of my best friends in the world, but he was still a friend. I can't imagine how badly his parents felt, it must have been terrible. What has always stuck with me about that day, was that I remember some kids on the bus the day before Christmas break teasing him about killing himself. I thought they were joking around, apparently he did not.

2) I once crashed my bicycle on the day after Christmas. It wasn't a horrible bike accident, and I've certainly had worse in my day. I just remember having a rotten cut on my leg that eventually got infected. Stupid bike, always hanging out back of the men's room smoking cigarettes.

3) My cat got run over. His name was Stormy and he was all black. He had a brother, Jake, who was all white. Jake ran away when we moved to Virginia Beach. Before I was ten, I lived in Rhode Island in a big blue farmhouse for a time. It was old and had a big yard and woods right next to it with lots of woodland critters to harass. The perfect place for a pair of kittens to get into all kinds of fun kitten adventures. The only problem with the house was that it was off of a very busy road, and we had a line of evergreen trees my father had planted to keep the noise down. The day after Christmas, Stormy and Jake went across the road to have some kind of kitten adventure on the farm that was located there. Well Jake came home about noon, and we didn't know where Stormy was, at about 5 my father went out to the road and found the poor cat.

4) When I was fifteen I got arrested on the 26th. I was out with a couple of friends and eventually ended up at one of my friend's house. He decided that he needed to go take a smoke and we went out to the overpass near his house. He began throwing small rocks down at cars in the middle of the night onto what is the beltway that runs around London. The cops got a cellphone call from one of the cars he had hit and I got to spend the night in jail. Jail was very cold and they took my shoes. But I did get a cell to myself, which was nice because they gave me a copy of a book of British law that I read. My mom had to pick me up from jail and sit with me while I made my statement to the officers. Merry Christmas mom! Your fifteen year old son got arrested when him and his friend were really drunk.

5) I got rear-ended while I was sitting still at a light. The guy who hit me was driving a Mercedes and he insisted that I had stopped suddenly. Truth was that I had been sitting there about 10 seconds, a fact to which the cop who saw the whole thing was willing to attest to. I didn't have much damage to my car (he had some) but I had to listen to this guy rant and rave at me while before the cop walked over.

6) The train engine of the train set my grandfather gave me died the day after I got it, never to run again. I know that one is kinda minor compared to all the rest. But it was a really nice train set.

Well this year I managed to complete a trifecta of miserable events on this special day. First up, was me re spraining and possibly breaking my ankle. My left ankle, and this time it hurts like the dickens (I have no idea where this expression comes from but I suspect it has something to do with reading the works of Charles Dickens...which I found somewhat enjoyable). Once again I rolled it doing something innocuous but it was very painful nevertheless. When I got home and my ankle was elevated and being iced, I was treated to two more surprises. One of my roomates walked in and told me he was moving out. Before January. With no warning. And he was taking the girl I love with him. I understand his reasons for moving out, but that doesn't make it any more easy on me or the other roomates. I'm especially broken up about Katy having to leave with him. Oh well, life will move on, and we'll just add it to the list of things that happens on this day.

I wonder if I have a day that is the reverse of this day. You know, some date of the year where wonderful things happen. I'm not aware of such a day, but hopefully it exists right? There should be some kind of cosmic balance, where I wake up and something good happens on that day. For me it seems pretty likely that the day is probably February 29th. That's right, my day of cosmic balance in which something good happens every year that day comes around would only happen once every four years. Stupid cosmic balance, stupid leap year, always smoking behind the men's room.