I'm not sure if you guys have heard, but the entire city of San Diego, CA and most of the surrounding area is completely without power and will be until at least tomorrow morning. I heard the number of people without power go from 64,000 to 1.4 million to 5 million. The cause is still under investigation, but right now it looks like one guy fucked up a little bit and ended up triggering this massive outage. In a just and sane universe, the magnitude of a fuckup would be relatively proportional to the magnitude of the consequences. However, we know that the universe is neither just nor sane. Sometimes, tiny fuckups lead to massive consequences. One slip of the condom? 18+ years of child support. Alternatively, many massive fuckups have no consequences for the person at all, and they come out smelling like a rose. FOCUS: When have you experienced a relatively minor fuckup that turns into major consequences? ANTI FOCUS: When have you (or someone you know) fucked up something huge with seemingly unavoidable end-of-the-world consequences that turned out to be no big deal?
My sister got pregnant after a one-night stand in Vegas, and with no job, no father and no prospects, decided to keep the baby. Everyone was convinced it was the worst decision of her life. She now is married to a really nice lieutenant who adopted her daughter when she was a year old, has a nice house, job experience, and the sweetest, most polite little toddler in the world. I'm still waiting for the teenage years when I can train my niece to piss off her mother, since my sister's solution to anyone not faring well is, "They should totally get pregnant, it worked for me."
Visited my friend for lunch at his work which was a large billing company. Walking down the stairwell I see a fire sprinkler pipe protruding from the wall and got the bright idea to do a few pull ups on it. (I weighed a whopping 140lb back then) Que the pipe breaking, spraying hundreds, if not thousands of gallons of water that ran into the warehouse and billing insert machines area. I shut down a plant of probably 200-250 workers for about 4 hours. Oops.
When I was younger I had two little girls 13 months apart. I can't take birth control pills so I used a diaphragm. Worked fine with the same brand of spermicide for two years. I was in the store one day with a friend of mine and commented that they were out of my brand of spermicide. She told me that she had used the other brand for years with no problems. I purchase the other brand and think nothing of it UNTIL I found out I was pregnant the next month. I was upset but it was a boy so my little family was complete and I got a tubal ligation. Worked fine for two years. I went to the ER with a kidney infection and they informed me I WAS PREGNANT! I was indignant that they must have my urine mixed up with someone else's. I then went to a friend of mine's clinic for another test. I was pregnant but I ended up having a miscarriage which is common after tubal ligation. Not sure if this qualifies as true fuck ups on my part but it was certainly a few OOPS moments!