Graduation fail...eyeball tassel...

Sometimes, it would be nice to accomplish something without a failure involved in it. It would be great to finish a wood project that didn’t include cutting a finger, smashing a thumb or chipping off the wood causing a big splinter in your hand. It would be fantastic to go out and play basketball without tripping over the ball, getting an elbow to the head or spraining an ankle. It would be fun to organize a program and not be in the middle of it when you realize you forgot to get a speaker, or typed the title incorrectly or forgot to include the time it started. 

These things happen all the time to people and sometimes I feel like they happen to me all too often. I seem to have a small cloud of little fails following me around regularly, and little slices of sunshine success peak through once in a while. Don’t get me wrong - I do not live my life like Eeyore (I looked up the spelling - never thought this was how it’s spelled), I’m much more like Piglet or Pooh - I like the positive side of life - it’s very easy to be negative and I’ld rather be on the brighter side of life. However, fails happen to me much.

When I graduated college, I was as excited as most would be. I had been married for almost a year and God had provided a career to go to, right after I was going to walk the aisle and flip the tassel. This is where I fail, even in the graduation ceremony. As I was walking down the aisle chit-chatting with friends, making fun of the audience, eating some milk and cookies, and making sure I didn’t trip over my gown, I turned my head towards someone. 

Do not do this when graduating! The tassel swung violently (I think it knocked four people out in the audience) and it hit me in the eye. Now that’s bad enough, because that hurts when your eye is open - you know how that feels. I was only feet away from the steps to go up on the stage and now this? The issue didn’t stop there. As the tassel hit me in the eye, I blinked and caught the tassel under my eyelid and drug it across my bare eyeball (wish I was a shark and could pull my eye back into my head like they do). It didn’t just hurt, it felt like someone took a shish-kabob skewer and jammed it into my eye. Of course, silly me had to react with ninja-like action (you know how quick I am) and pull it out with a sense of urgency, so I did. That’s fail #2. It drug across my eye and, I think my eyeball was hanging on my cheek. At this point I was sure the whole audience had seen my flailing and the eyeball on my cheek with tears streaming all over, had to be incredibly obvious.

I quickly put my eye back in (this is an exaggeration - I carried it in my hand until I got my diploma) and walked up the stairs to get my scroll. I then moved the tassel to the opposite side, like we all do and cried my way down the stairs on the opposite side. Most people thought I was just emotional with graduating and all, until they looked closely. I also held my head on my opposite shoulder, so as to not have both eyes laying on my cheeks.

I think most people have a little different memory of their graduation than I do...

Lessons Learned: You should have to get a license to carry a tassel.

Thoughts: What funny graduation memory do you have?

#failalot