JFF: What's Your "Only in My Life Would This Happen" Scenario

Updated on June 05, 2016
J.B. asks from Boston, MA
12 answers

We've all been there, that moment when a confluence of events so unlikely happens that you (and people you know) remark "that would only happen to me/you." For example for my friend Kristin, it's not a weekend away for her family until someone ends up in the ER...every out of town wedding, vacation, etc. involves her, one of her kids, or one of her extended family having an unlikely accident resulting in stitches or crutches.

My "only in my life" situation this week is that I am taking a 6-hour exam on Saturday and my oldest son and step-daughter are graduating high school Sunday and we're having a party at my house after so in addition to intensive test prep this week (12-15 hours a day) I had to open my pool and clean up the yard over the weekend, order tents/tables/chairs and food, and somehow get the house clean and buy paper goods between now and Sunday. That situation is just classic me (of course the test is only offered twice a year and of course the one date that makes sense is the weekend of graduation) but what puts the cherry on top is that I now have poison ivy *on my face* and just got a prednisone prescription in the hopes that it doesn't move to my eyelids and make them swell shut (right now it's hovering just outside the socket). Taking an exam while prying my eyes open would be just perfect...

So...make me feel better please - what are the wacky and unlikely situations that would only happen to you?

What can I do next?

  • Add yourAnswer own comment
  • Ask your own question Add Question
  • Join the Mamapedia community Mamapedia
  • as inappropriate
  • this with your friends

So What Happened?

Thanks for responding some of these made me laugh out loud.

To add to my mess, I have no hot water and Sunday will bring "tropical rainfall" in the afternoon. So...40 people in my 1100 sq ft house. I spent $350 on tent rental that will probably be a waste but maybe if the rain is light enough, people will venture outside and hang out there. I wasted over 2 hours of study time today messing around with the oil burner when the first tech came and insisted that the problem was that I'm out of oil (I'm not, the gauge said that I'm not but you know being just a dumb woman what would I know). Several follow up phone calls later they finally sent out another tech who did a thorough check and found a leak in the filter. So I'm vindicated and it's a simple fix but I've wasted hours of valuable study time on this.

Featured Answers

Smallavatar-fefd015f3e6a23a79637b7ec8e9ddaa6

M.L.

answers from Cleveland on

My husband got rear ended two weeks ago driving my car..a week later someone hit me while I was driving his car...last night a BEAR broke the window out of my mom's car to get a 59 lb bag of sunflower seeds in the back hatch....seriously! Not to mention regular life is totally insane... The 2 ball teams my child is on..graduation. baby showers and birthday party we have going on right now....I am so Done!!

3 moms found this helpful

More Answers

Smallavatar-fefd015f3e6a23a79637b7ec8e9ddaa6

M.G.

answers from Portland on

For us, it's camping.

Every single time we go camping - we're not talking torrential downpours, but also the worst rainstorms they've had in 30 years. It never fails. We book ahead of time as part of our vacations (weeklong camping) with friends. We are making do with tents - and every year I say "Well, it can't get worse than this". Well it does.

And it's never called for. It's on the coast by the ocean, so weather is unpredictable. But it's almost ridiculous how bad it is. So now it's become a running joke. We've made videos of our tent almost being washed away (while other people's gear goes floating by on a sea of muddy water) with thunder and lightning going on in the background. And every year we say "Let's pack in it" but the kids love it, think it's an adventure, and beg us to stay. So we do. And just as we get all the tarps and sleeping bags dried out (this takes a good day and we rotate them all to get sun) never fails - we'll have one good night, then there will be another rainstorm.

You would think we would give up by now, but we are gluttons for punishment. I keep thinking it's changing weather patterns. We never ran into this years ago when we started out.

Anyhow - we pack extra tarps and I'm saving for a camper. But last year our friends with the campers were near septic systems that overflowed from flooding, so we were actually in the better shape in our leaky tent. At least it didn't smell.

6 moms found this helpful

E.A.

answers from Erie on

It rained every single time we move in the last 20 years. Every. Single. Damn. Time.

6 moms found this helpful

T.D.

answers from Springfield on

we can't vacation without an interesting thing happening
we camped in lake of the ozarks and had 60+ mph winds rush thru ahead of a storm
we camped near lake egypt and had tornadoes and woke up with the tent floating in a mini river and flooding in the area
went to maui for our honeymoon, they had Vog (like fog but its made of volcanic ash and humidity), then it rained in the non rain season (locals were shocked that it was raining) and to top the whole honeymoom off we had an earthquake on the day we were flying out... (2006 quake that hit the big island)
went to myrtle beach and the fire alarms were going off... staff were confused and didn't know why
recently went to wisconsin dells it was 40 something and SNOWING IN MAY totally not right.
so now the joke is that were going on vacation... what are we going to have next? volcano eruption? tsunami? hurricane inland? real fire? snow in july in a southern state?

5 moms found this helpful
Smallavatar-fefd015f3e6a23a79637b7ec8e9ddaa6

H.W.

answers from Portland on

Well, fairly sure I'm not the only one, but lately I'm striking out when it comes to stuff in Kiddo's pockets getting into the laundry. Nearly every time I check his pockets, there's nothing in there. But when I don't.... watch out! The last time was sand dollars. Really. Crumbly white little sand dollars he'd put in his pocket at the beach. They fell to pieces in the wash. I ran the empty washer on spin with the lid up to get the pieces to come out from under the agitator, stopping it several times to get pieces out of there. When I told Kiddo about them, he said "That's okay, Mom. I'm not mad. They were broken anyway."

Well, alrighty then! So, that's what I get when I don't check the pockets. Bleah.

5 moms found this helpful

D.B.

answers from Boston on

OMG J.B., like you need one more thing in your life! I'm so sorry - my son used to get poison ivy like that. Hoping it resolves soon!

Mine seem to center around the ER. Many years ago, my husband and I moved into our new house, and he was at a relatively new job in downtown Boston (about 35 miles away). I had taken him to the train that morning, and I had the car. I was getting things unpacked and organized, and I was washing some of his daughters' white clothes that had gotten stained in the move. I opened the bottle of bleach and was waiting for the washer to fill to the halfway point so I could add bleach. The machine agitated and the bleach bottle was jostled and dropped into the half-full tub, splashing bleach out and onto my chest, legs, face and into my eyes. I raced, blindly, to the kitchen to get my eyes under the running faucet. As soon as possible, I got to the phone and called 911. The ambulance took me off to the Umass trauma center, flushing my eyes as we went - so I arrived completely soaked. My legs burned a bit as the bleach worked its way through my jeans and to my skin, but mostly my eyes were the concern. I didn't know any neighbors yet so there was no one to accompany me, and there were no cell phones then for me to call my husband. Fast forward to being checked out by the ER doctor and waiting for the ophthalmologist for a more in-depth exam - I was now out of danger and just waiting, so I called my husband via (gasp!) a pay phone. He couldn't figure out how to get home since there are no trains running mid-day (just a rush hour schedule). He didn't have cash for a cab (it would have been a 45 mile trip, so not cheap). I got pissed and basically told him I didn't care if he went into the men's room to find the CEO and say he needed some petty cash for a family emergency, and hung up.

I guess he called his mother to try to negotiate some sort of pick-up or rendezvous - she wasn't capable of driving into the city of Boston but maybe something else could have been worked out. I don't remember the details on that part. In any case, she was now in the loop but decided to be even more helpless than usual. So after he got a cab to bring him to our house, where he could get our car, he called her again. Then the ER desk nurse flags me down to say there's a call for me on HER line - yep, it's MIL telling me how upset my husband is!!! I told her I didn't give a #*$( because my legs were burning and my eyes in danger (yeah, I got dramatic). She tells me he got home, smelled the odor of bleach, and decided to air out the house! It didn't occur to him that I could have used him at my side instead of making things homey and pleasant. And she got mad when I told her I had to get off the phone and turn it back over to the ER staff who kind of needed an open line. Eventually I finished with the ophthalmologist, got released, and got a cab home. I just wanted to get a shower and get out of my bleached and ruined clothes. We had an account with a tiny local one-car cab company to take my MIL around after dark or in inclement weather, so I could at least charge my ride. (Again, this was before ATMs in hospitals or debit cards accepted by cabs.) And on the way home, the driver got a call from the dispatcher that my MIL was on the phone with HIM trying to find out where I was so she could let her poor worried son know what my status was! (I know he didn't put her up to it - that was her version of "helping"). The next day, she arrived at my door, as I lay on the couch with a rip-roaring headache behind my eyes, unable to read or watch TV, and she wanted to come in and "visit." But then she wanted me go find a vase for a few flowers she had brought me, find scissors so she could trim the stems. I had no idea what moving box these things would have been in even if I'd felt well enough to look. Sigh. It took her years to stop being mad at me for being a bad hostess for and "upsetting" her son!

Thanks a lot - not you've got ME all worked up!!! LOL!

Anyway, get well soon and I hope the crazy graduation stuff goes smoothly. Kudos to you for getting through all of this with some modicum of humor and grace!

3 moms found this helpful
Smallavatar-fefd015f3e6a23a79637b7ec8e9ddaa6

S.B.

answers from Houston on

My husband had poison ivy a few years ago. It was terrible. I thought he was going to end up in the hospital. Take care especially around the eyes.

Whenever hubby goes out of town, something happens to me, the kids, the house, the dog. Something, and he goes out of town a lot!!! Oh well!!!

2 moms found this helpful

S.T.

answers from Houston on

I am an accident prone person. My parents have long joked the doctor’s number was in every wallet they carried and taped by every phone they used and the nearest ER stored in memory and part of any solid vacation plan. To think of a short list there was the time my brother sprayed bleach in my eyes and the other time he put me in the gas dryer way back when they would run with the door open. Then there was the tree branch that fell from the tree canopy and split open my skull. A self-induced concussion, backing up undressed into a lit gas heater, a near drowning and near miss by a falling tree on various vacations. I almost cut off my big toe by hopping up on the dryer to reach something; it was missing the kick plate panel and the spinning barrel cut me as I got on top. I then broke that same toe when a beer glass dropped from the door of the freezer as I opened it. I have gotten more infections in that toe than I can shake a stick out. All of the injuries have left it vulnerable in so many ways. I have knocked myself nearly unconscious by hitting my temple on the granite in the kitchen. Most recently was the swan dive I took from a step stool when I lost my balance, pinning wheeling backwards I crashed into the closet bars bruising ribs and legs galore. The bruises alone took months to heal. My husband found me on the closet floor, laughing like a loon because it hurt so bad I didn’t know what else to do. All he asked was “what’d you do now?”

The sad part is my youngest son seems to be carrying the torch. In his short three years he has had more black eyes than you can count. Our running tally of continuously blacked eyes was four and half months. Every single week we were at daycare explaining all the various creative means he found to blacken his eyes. Fortunately he was doing the same at school so they saw firsthand his tendency for accidents. I was overjoyed when he gave black eyes a break. Although he is currently sporting one from bashing heads with a classmate. He has matching scars over each eyebrow. Six months apart he sliced first one and then other open and required glue to fix them in turn. One was a tumble off a chair into an end table which was not the nicest way to end a holiday trip to grandma’s house. The other was a tumble in the bathtub. He gave himself concrete rash when he fell headlong into the sidewalk, tripping over his own feet. I saw the whole thing and it made my stomach drop. He had raw scratches running from his forehead across his nose down to his lips and chin. He had a goose egg on his forehead for added measure. He has run head first into another small child, biting his tongue so hard blood was gushing out of his mouth and there was a perfect teeth imprint on his tongue once the blood slowed. He has fallen down the stairs from tripping. Fortunately our stairs are not a straight shot and he has a landing to stop him. Still heart stopping and the first accident in our new house before we could buy baby gates. The very first thing we did the next morning was buy gates. I could go on but he has had more accidents than our other two children combined. At this point he doesn’t cry unless it is a big deal. We took the opportunity last year to re-evaluate and improve our insurance coverage because of him. I am hoping it is a phase he grows out of. In the meantime I have all the emergency numbers saved on my phone and the location of nearby urgent care and ER clinics saved on my map app.

P.S. This is why I get family blood duty and my husband vomit. He said I am more than amply qualified.

2 moms found this helpful

A.W.

answers from Kalamazoo on

I don't really have an overall theme, hmmm.......But last night at dinner, my daughter dropped her plate and it shattered on the tile kitchen floor, then just seconds later, my husband went to shake up a jar of sauce and didn't realize I'd already loosened the cap, so it flew out all over him and the kitchen counter and floor!!! BIG mess! hahaha So ya, usually that kind of stuff LOL

2 moms found this helpful
Smallavatar-fefd015f3e6a23a79637b7ec8e9ddaa6

S.N.

answers from Santa Barbara on

I am not sure if this is the kind of story you are looking for but the first thing that came to my mind was bathing rats in cooking oil. That sound worse than it was. Let me explain.
A few years ago a teacher from my kids school couldn't take of the classroom pet rats any longer. After a few days of begging me the kids and my husband wore me down and I agreed to take them in. All was fine for the first year but they ended up with mites from their bedding. I looked up how to treat this at home and read that cooking oil worked to smother the pest.
I rember standing over my sink with a bowl full of oil in it dipping 2 rats with the stuff and thinking to my self "so... This is what my life has come to"
For anyone wondering yes the oil did work and they passed away from old age some time later. However to this day when I think back on things that I have done and never thought I would rats in oil still tops the list.
Keep strong. You can make it. We are all cheering for you. I hope my experience was able to make you smile :D

1 mom found this helpful
Smallavatar-fefd015f3e6a23a79637b7ec8e9ddaa6

N.P.

answers from Chicago on

we had a 3 month period where my husband lost his job of 24 yrs, four appliances broke, our basement flooded with water, and a week later with sewage, and we all got influenza AND our car broke down...

N.G.

answers from Boston on

Donating things I had not used in years to a thrift store and then suddenly having a need for them the very next day....

For Updates and Special Promotions
Follow Us

Related Questions