Some days things just don’t go right. Have you ever had a day when, from the word “go,” it just wasn’t happening for you?

Well, that didn’t happen to me this particular day. But I did have a period of about thirty minutes in which things went spectacularly and gloriously wrong.

It started with a calm and calculated decision to drive home between classes because I forgot the notes for my next class. I had fifty minutes, and figured while home I could get the books I need to study this afternoon. So, I walked into the neighborhood where I had parked the Miata at 7am this morning.

Someone had managed to park behind me so close, there was room roughly for a pocket mouse to squeeze between fenders. The Miata is a stick shift. It rolls. I just started driving it. Unless you have very careful control of things, rolling into the car parked about 18mm behind you isn’t an impossibility. Well, that wasn’t too bad – I just “toe-heeled” it (thanks, Dad – you’d have been proud…ish) with an amazingly efficient lack of finesse, and slowly stalled and jerked my way of of the spot. I was out on the road. Success.

I went home, along the way patting myself on the back for shifting the gears more smoothly than before.

Now, for some absurd reason, I don’t have the key to the front door – my key only unlocks the back door; specifically the deadbolt. So, as usual, I walked to the back – fending off the jackals who jumped up and attempted to jump out the gate. And I unlocked the door – it moved about a centimeter, and the burgular alarm started screaming.

Someone had locked the chain lock, and I was locked out, and in about a minute the alarm company is going to call the house and then send the police and my mom’s cell phone isn’t on…so I sprinted to the front, started trying to wedge open the dining room window (which is adjacent to our front porch and thereby very visible to the street). The dogs followed. A wrench in my backpack for biking purposes came in handy,  and in about 30 seconds I had the window ajar.

So, this woman drives by and see a mud-covered girl shoving dogs in through a window of a house while a loud alaram goes off…a girl who then, upon saying all is well, climbs in the window with grace. Turns off the alarm. Throws the dogs in the crate. Grabs her books. Races back out.

Well, disaster averted, right? Take a deep breath – if the neighbors happen to call the cops, oh well. That this is the third time I’ve climbed through that window this month is another issue.

So, I got puttering off. My hearbeat is slowing, all is well…

And get pulled over. “You’re car’s registration is expired and you have no front license plate.” “Ummm…I don’t know where they are? We registered it…” (where do license plates go anyways? It never seemed they are the kind of thing to develop legs and run off…) The car has no registration, that apparently is somewhere back in the house. “Insurance?” “Umm…here’s one from March 09…2008…September 02 (What on earth is that still in here for?)…”

Well, miraculously, despite my short and flurried manner, he gives me a ticket and doesn’t take his sweet time (my first ticket!). Meanwhile, class is about to start and I have a test.

I stall the car about five times as I try to drive away.

But, I make it. All the way to about a mile from campus, the closest parking spot at five minutes after class. I run and walk and run a bit more, realize I’ve got mud all up and down my front from the dogs. Race up the stairs.

And made it within ten minutes of class starting. I might have looked absurd, muddy and hair all over and clearly running on adrenaline. But I was there, and I had my scantron (and notes for class!), and, all in all, it wasn’t bad.

I got to regale my friend with the story later, write this post and thereby find something to put up for tomorrow, and I’ve got all afternoon to study for my next test.

Oh, and the best part? That test I took? Aced it.

Addendum:

So, turns out in my rush to get to class I left the lights on and my mom had to drive out at 8:45pm to give me a jump, whereupon we got into an argument about how to hook up the jumper cables, called half a dozen people who didn’t know or weren’t picking up, and finally got rescued by a guy who was driving by who settled the disagreement and got the car going (turns out I was wrong).

Oh, and the car died again in the driveway. Turns out that was a smaller problem that my stepfather knew how to fix, but by then, 9:30, my mother and I were ready to wash our hands of the whole thing and just go to bed.

So we did.