Is it this easy for everyone? To do it completely opposite of what you intended, I mean? If they did genetic testing for it, I’m pretty sure I’d be labeled as a high risk carrier of Acute Mix-upitis, although there’s not much cute about it.
I inherited it from my great, great maternal grandmother I guess, who apparently had a powerful strain of it. I was told that she was once piecing a quilt, but also dipping snuff, and she got up intending to lay her quilt pieces on the bed before going to spit in the fire. And yeah - you’re ahead of me - she spit on the bed and threw her quilt pieces in the fire.
It also came straight down the pipe in paternal DNA. My dad nuked his $3,000 hearing aids in the microwave because he meant to be warming jelly beans. Don’t even ask. I don’t even have the strength to explain that one.
And he also chose to store degreaser in a Sprite bottle in the carport fridge when I was ten years old. Ask me how I know. I lived to tell.
It comes down.
It doesn’t have to be opposite day for me to celebrate it. I text the opposite person of the one I intended to. I go in the opposite door of the one I’m supposed to, and wonder why there’s so much liquor in the dry cleaner’s. I go to the opposite end of town from where I was supposed to be meeting my brother. It’s tiring.
It’s why I own an electric knife. I thought I was bidding on a crystal punchbowl.
I was reminded of my talent yesterday when I showed up for the church fellowship meal prepared. I thought. Was it announced that there was a theme? How is it that everyone else understood that we were having breakfast. They were walking in with cheese grits and sausage casseroles, cinnamon rolls you would commit a crime for. Somehow, when I set the Mexican cornbread down in the middle, it took us back to Sesame Street days in the late 1970s, singing a round of “One of these things is not like the others.”
I once called the wrong Jean to watch the kids so my husband and I could have a quiet evening at a favorite restaurant. The call went like this.
“Hi, Jean!”
“Hi.”
“This is Celine.”
“Yes. How are you?”
“Fine. I was wondering what time you want me to bring the kids over tonight?”
Pause.
“Oh, are you bringing the kids?”
“Well, you know, you told me to.”
Longer pause.
“This is Jean, right?”
“Yeah, yeah, this is Jean. I’m not sure I remember what we talked about. What time do you want to bring them?”
I had to love that she was so compliant, even if confused.
I’m just gifted at getting the wrong thing in the right event. Or is it getting the right thing in the wrong, you know, thing? I mean, there’s nothing wrong with cayenne pepper. And in my defense, it does look a lot like cinnamon. But it’s not great sprinkled over the whipped cream on a gingerbread latte.
I can vouch.
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