Just the fact that I'm writing on the blog today may turn into a big oops, but we'll see how it goes.

Oops doesn't make me think of accidental stuff, it makes me think of stupid things. Some accidents are stupid, but to be an oops there is an undefinable characteristic that you just know. An oops can also occur when someone is just a moron.

I'm not sure what radio station I was listening to this morning, but they had a segment called "Easy Questions." When the announcers started talking about it, I thought, so what they just call people and ask them questions? Appears I was right. This morning's question was what is paper made from? Three people didn't know, two hung up on them and only two even attempted to answer. The answers given: styrofoam and aluminum. Yep, these two individuals thought paper was made styrofoam or aluminum. This wasn't a multiple choice question. It's not like those two things were there and they randomly yelled "A" or "D," nope they came up with these on their own. I call that an oops.

So maybe I'm focusing more on dumb moments, but here's another. I went to the Farmer's Market yesterday to grab a few things. It was around 5:30, so they were getting ready to close, and only one line was open (of course when they're all open there are still only two lines, so...). Anyway, the couple ahead of me was having trouble checking out. They had a credit from something, though I'm not sure how you get store credit at the farmer's market, and the girl behind the counter was beyond confused. She asked another clerk for help, and the woman came over to explain the transaction. Then the girl behind the counter couldn't work the calculator. She yelled over a large pile of produce, "Yoar calculator ain't workin'!" The other woman responded, "Yea it is, you just ain't got enuf sense to use it." Now I'd have been a little offended if someone had told me that in front of five other people I didn't know, but this girl giggled and said, "You probly right. I failed math twice last year. I can't hardly count. If that machine don't tell me how to give change, I can't do it." I left a little disturbed and went to mom's house to recount the event. It's a good thing the girl was cute, because she doesn't have much else to work with.

My dad's life is full of oops moments. No, I'm not about to get serious; don't disengage. When he and my mom got married, they had twice baked potatoes a their wedding. Apparently the restaurant that catered the dinner felt that potato skins were too plain to repackage the spuds in once they were mixed with everything else, so they had small cardstock like containers that they stuffed. Mom says the containers were shaped kind of like a potato, but not so much that you shouldn't have noticed they weren't. Well, Daddy didn't notice. My dad sawed through his "potato" and ate that cardstock. He says with all the butter and cheese, he never really noticed until he saw that no one else had eaten their potato skins. Oops.

Another of his oops moments would be when he got in a fight in high school. It was rare for me dad to go more than a month without getting in a fight at school, so most of his teachers had little patience for any absences or injuries that resulted. He fought someone at lunch one day, and when he was allowed to return to class, he found everyone taking a test. Daddy says his hands were really stiff and sore, but the teacher refused to believe him. She told him he could go to the nurse when he finished his test and refused to let him just take a zero. So he sat down to take his math test. He found out later that day that his hands were broke--both of them, in the same place. Yea, he failed his math test.

My papa also has quite a few oops moments. When he was in his early twenties he was stationed in Germany where he met my Oma. Being a young military guy who had never been far from home, he was living it up. He has all kinds of stories about bring arrested by the MP's or hiding in the wine cellar at the restaurant my Oma worked in until the German police gave up searching for him. But my favorite oops story of his is probably when he went by Oma's restaurant to pick her up after work one night. She lived in Ludwigsburg, and like most older German towns, there is a town square where markets and festivals are frequently held. In the center of this square is a statue of King Ludwig. On this particular night, papa had had a few too many drinks (he doesn't drink now, but I think he met his lifetime quota when he was in the military). As he and Oma walked across the square, he spotted the statue. "That man looks cold," he proclaimed, and proceeded to slide across the ice in the fountain surrounding the statue, climb the fifteen foot structure and give "the man" his jacket. Everytime we go to Ludwigsburg our family talks about how that man would have never survived if papa hadn't kept him warm.

A student of mine had an oops moment that I love to tell. Joe was an endearing kid who tended more toward mischief than trouble, but managed to find his fair share of both. He came to class one morning with a tatoo on his left forearm. I asked to see it, and was surprised to see a very poorly done piece that looked like it said "toe." When I asked him the significance of the tatoo, he said, "It's my name Mrs. Elliott." Um, "That says toe," was my response. He shook his head, "I knew somebody was gonna notice that." As the story progressed, I found out that Joe had done the tatoo himself--while he was drunk, and he couldn't quite tell where the top of his "j"'s hook began--so he just put a line crossways and hoped he got it right. Turns out he put the line a litte lower than the top of the hook and his arm now read "toe" instead of "Joe."

My most recent oops that was substantial enough to remember would have to be catching the oven on fire. I had made sausage rolls for someone earlier in the week, and I didn't notice that some of the grease from the sausage had dripped to the bottom of the oven. A few days later when I went to preheat my oven, I set the temperature to 425 and left the room. When I heard the oven beeping to let me know the temp. was set I entered the kitchen to find my oven looking like a gas firplace. Flames filled the inside and smoke was starting to escape from the vent. Panic flooded me and images of my neighbors house burning down when I was in high school filled my mind. Anna was in the living room, and I was torn between standing in the yard with her and calling the fire department or putting her in her bed and putting out the flames myself. For a long time Backdraft was one of my favorite movies, and all I could envision was me opening the oven door and being engulfed in a rush of flame as the oxygen hit the blaze, my child stranded in her crib. (In case you haven't noticed, my mind tends to be melodramatic.) Logic won out, and I put Anna in her bed and went to the flames, fire extinguisher on the counter, baking soda in hand. All of this took place within less than a minute, and in reality the flame was probably nowhere near as large as I imagined. I do check the bottom of my oven for leftover "stuff" now, and I've also checked our fire extinguishers to make sure they aren't out of date. Oops.