How to Not Maim, Injure, or Somehow Disappear Yourself

Accident Prone or Unlucky? You’ll Feel Better After Reading This

It Started with the Wrong Uber

Did you every wonder what happens when you get into someone else’s Uber and the driver doesn’t speak your language? I hadn’t…until recently.

Which is surprising. I tend to catastrophize when it comes to gallivanting around Paris armed only with toddler French.

I typically imagine myself post-accident: rushed to the hospital, that God-awful siren blaring, reminding me of Anne Frank. EMTs speaking above my head as they poke around my body, me understanding almost nothing.

But I never pictured an emergency in an Uber. After all, it’s prearranged…in English. All I have to do is ask the driver who I am.

“Mon nom?” I ask on this particular night. I’m on my way to a party in a far-away part of Paris.

My question is undoubtedly incorrect and incomplete. The French prefer full sentences. My hope is that my slightly deeper, in-charge interrogative voice will make up for the lack of actual words.

To my relief, he replies, “Melinda?” At least, that’s what I think he says, so I hop into the backseat. I am relieved that hears it as a question, not a come-on — as once happened when I asked the oyster vendor on rue Cler if he was married (don’t ask).

I am about to relax when I glance at his GPS screen. It does not say “17 rue Ramponeau,” the address of a tapas restaurant in the arty Belleville section of Paris where my friend Frederick is hosting his 35th.

Alarmed, I ask the driver’s name. He does not answer, “Zulfaqar.” Now paying closer attention, I see that he also looks nothing like the guy in my Uber app.

“Arret!” I say in a voice too loud for a small car. “C’est un erreur!”

I show him that the Uber app says I’m en route — in Zulfaqar’s car, mind you. He looks puzzled and then consults his own screens.

As Paris mishaps go, this one was about as terrifying as the time a fellow food-shopper stole my caddy. As it turned out, the driver was a nice guy, and Google Translate saved the day — ultimately, a win-win: I got there; the driver got cash.

Someone Stole My Caddy and No One Believed Me!

I venture out in Paris, despite the potential humiliation of speaking French badly — or speaking bad French.

melindablau.medium.com

So have I told this story only to entice you to read another? Absolutely not. Both incidents — and a few days later, locking myself out of my apartment — are what we (who know me) call an “oh-Melin.”

Etymology of the Oh-Melin

I seem to invite such occurrences; sometimes, I cause them. Paris is admittedly more problematic because of my inadequate French, and the unfamiliarity of it all. It demands my full attention. But I can’t blame forgetting my keys on the city.

Maybe it’s because I lived the first ten years of my life with extremely poor uncorrected vision. I couldn’t see much past the length of a car — a fact I know because on my college health form, my eye doc described my visual acuity as “fingers at ten feet.” So I stopped trying.

My partner, who has known me for thirty years and counting, calls me Mr. Magoo. But it’s more than eyesight. I am dyslexic. I am distracted and often forgetful. I love to multitask. The more balls in the air, the more alive I feel. Aforementioned partner calls it my “gerbil brain” and insists that I wake up talking.

I’ve always been who I am. I am the four year old who in a family video of a milestone occasion repeatedly pops up and down, as if I can’t quite decide which is worse: sitting or standing still. Clearly, still is the problem.

I am the buck-toothed eight-year-old in a “game” created by a diabolical older brother: Pull-the-rug-out-from-under-the-little-kids. When he does, I’m the only one who doesn’t extend her arms to break the fall. My front teeth are half-gone when I get up.

I am the ten year old who accidentally sets a toilet bowl on fire.

Gail, who would later become a sorority sister and roommate, came up with “oh-Melin” in our freshman year. The term was first used to describe me and then became a synonym for any type of mishap. If you’re not careful, you might have/do an oh-Melin.

If memory serves (and we know how that goes), I walked into a friend’s dorm — Gail was either with me or already there — and enthusiastically plopped onto the bed without noticing that the friend was giving herself a manicure. Down I came, and up flew the open bottle of nail polish.

“Oh, Melin’!” Gail blurted out…again?”

My reign of self-terror did not end in college. I was the one who made pictures leap from the wall, who knocked over your coke and simultaneously made you choke. My children once bought me a tiny notebook with a tucked-in pencil to wear around my neck so I wouldn’t forget. Is it any wonder I got into the wrong Uber or forgot my keys?

Is it catching or congenital?

Reggie, who came into my life when I was 43, not only loved teasing me about my oh-Melins, she blamed me for hers. “I only do these things when you’re around.”

Who knows? Perhaps oh-Melinism is infections. But I suspect it’s inborn. Those of us who come by it naturally are a little bit like the Peanuts character, Pig Pen. But instead of being “a dust magnet,” as Pig Pen calls himself, we are chaos magnets.

Not so my late friend Reggie nor Gail nor any of my other organized, attentive, and well-coordinated acquaintances. Like Gail, Reggie was good at keeping track of things. She juggled 23 medications and always knew where her wallet was — something I can never claim.

In contrast, my friend Barbara, whom I’ve also known since college, is more like me. I can’t count the times she opens a phone call with, “You wouldn’t believe what happened. It was a real oh-Melin.”

One particularly windy day in Manhattan, for example, Barbara walked past a restaurant with outdoor seating and was suddenly assaulted by a flying chair (“like the in the Wizard of Oz”). She was knocked down, luckily not badly injured but black and blue for weeks.

And oh my! Putting the two of us together invites disaster. Once, when a friend passed out on my living room floor, Barbara and I each grabbed an end and attempted to hoist her onto the couch. One, two, three….

Fortunately, the friend was out cold and very relaxed, so she didn’t hear our uncontrollable laughter as her limp body landed with a thud on the floor.

We didn’t kill her. And though I’ve flooded a few bathrooms in my day, I’ve never done any serious damage — mostly, just a string of similarly colorful and unpredictable oh-Melins. The idea is to keep it that way.

How to Disinvite Disaster

Based on anecdotal evidence, oh-Melins are repetitive but not cumulative — the aftereffects wear off. They also don’t get progressively worse. Each in its own way is instructive — or so I hope. For example, I now have a leaving-the-house mantra: “Leash, poop bag, phone, keys.”

While some oh-Melins are impossible to see coming or to plan for — like getting into the wrong Uber — most are preventable if you keep the suggestions below in mind:

Be honest.

Assess what you might do differently next time. Some oh-Melins are — at least in part — my fault. When I misjudge a situation, it’s usually because I’m not paying attention. I wasn’t thorough enough. I wasn’t as careful as I might have been. I could have asked for the Uber driver’s name before getting in. And though all cars look alike to me, I could have looked at the license plate.

Remind yourself to be present.

If I’m naturally accident prone, it’s because I am easily distracted — or, just the opposite, I over focus on one thing to the exclusion of everything else. At my worse, my attention is scattered. Knowing this, I talk to myself.

On walks: Watch where you’re going and stay off your phone.
When cooking: Did you turn the burner off?
Before leaving the house: Do you have keys? your cell phone? your shopping list?
And now, getting into an Uber: Get his name as well as asking for yours.

Use external aids.

I know by now that my gerbil brain can get me into trouble. I’m in the kitchen, the phone rings, and when I go to my desk to answer it, I notice a note I left for myself. I sit down at the computer and begin to write. It’s an oh-Melin in the making. Such scenarios gone wrong have taught me to set a timer on my phone when running a tub or putting up a pot of water to boil.

Forgive yourself.

Just as Pig-Pen can’t help staying dirty, I have to accept that I might always invite a little chaos. I’ve done oh-Melins for decades, and I’m still at it. I work at being more prudent and careful, but…well, $h!t happens.

Equally important, stress — especially the kind we heap on ourselves through negative self talk — only makes me more susceptible to oh-Melins.

My best is all I can do. I remind myself at the end of the day that I’m a damn competent woman. I just have lapses. And when I do, I laugh or cry, and then shake it off.

And who knows? Maybe the writer in me unconsciously invites bad things to happen, because it’s good material. As Nora Ephron famously observed, everything is copy.

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