Earlier today a friend of mine mentioned that she had been introduced to fmylife - a collection of short little snippets of how much peoples lives suck. The jury is out of course on how many of them are actually true, but for the most part they're pretty funny so I tend to overlook that. I hadn't checked the site for a while and just spent the last few hours reading 42 pages worth of interesting things, some of which I may even use as plot devices in a book, they're just that good.

As I was reading, I started wondering what my classic 'bad day' story is. I actually have several of them truth be told, because A) I'm the kind of person that random crazy shit happens to, and B) I have 'interesting' (read: dubious) friends around whom all sorts of shenannigans occur. The best one however must be from about 4-5 years ago and was the first one I thought of when I thought of having a really bad day.

Once upon a time I wasn't feeling very well, I was very tired and I had to go to work very early. I got dressed, got in the car and headed off to work which was very conveniently quite a long distance away from my house. About halfway there I realised I wasn't wearing any shoes. PANIC! I immediately turn off the main road onto a side road and then onto another side road where it was safe to park.

I popped the boot to my car. As anyone could tell you, I'm famous for leaving my shoes in the car. I had just cleaned out the car but I remembered seeing a pair in the boot. So out I hop, shutting the door behind me so an oncoming car doesn't hit it, and I check out the boot. Shit. I'd taken them out. Oh well, looks like I'll have to go back home and get them I think to myself as I slam the boot shut and open the door. Fuck. It's locked. I've accidentally pressed the lock when I've gotten out of the car and because the keys are still in the ignition (!!) it's locked all the doors, which it doesn't do normally because it won't lock unless all the doors are closed - except if the ignition is on!

Panic stations again. It's about 6 in the morning, there is nobody around, I'm locked out of my still running car and my phone is on the passenger seat. What do I do? Something terribly clever of course, I cry. I still can't think of what to do and a random passer-by walking home from work asks if I'm ok and after relating the sordid story she lets me borrow her mobile phone and I call and wake up my still sleeping boyfriend (who was pretty grumpy) and asked him to come and bring me some shoes and his phone so I can call RACQ. For the record - I didn't know the RACQ number so I would have had to fart arse around trying to get it so I figured it would be easier to let the kind lady go on her way and not wrack up her phone bill by calling people to see if they knew what it was. The RACQ number was on the back of my RACQ card, tucked inside my purse, inside my still running car.

Ben showed up eventually, I had no idea where I actually was and didn't see any street signs when I called him to tell him where I was, so it's amazing he even found me at all. He brought me shoes. Yay. One problem solved.

Then I grabbed his phone and rang my dad. Dad knows everything. I asked him if he knew the RACQ number. He said to look on the back of my card. I screamed down the phone at him my situation and he laughed and then told me. Bastard knew it off the top of his head. Why couldn't he have just said that instead of being a smartarse?

I hung up on dad and called RACQ. Ben's phone went flat. Fuckity fuck. Now what do I do? Meanwhile, at least 40 minutes has gone by and my car is still happily idling away. Ben kept change in the front of his car (thankfully) so I grabbed some change and said I'd go find a payphone. I was parallel to a main road and I knew there were payphones scattered along it close to where a friend lived. I instructed Ben not to let anyone steal my car and off I trotted (wearing shoes) and eventually found a payphone a few blocks away.

First I called work and told them I would be late. Not good enough. I had to tell Jon exactly what was going on. I was treated to even more laughter. Then I called RACQ to ask for assistance. Turns out that my membership had expired the week before and I hadn't paid it (the bill was sent to my old address and good old Australia Post decided not to forward it even though I'd paid for redirection). The very helpful operator told me that I could renew my membership over the phone with my credit card and then they could send a car out to help me. I explained that my credit card was three blocks away in my still running car that I was locked out of. She had to discuss it with her supervisor because their policy is not to send cars out to assist people who aren't current members. Eventually they decided they would help me. Great.

I ran back to my car thinking that the day's troubles were going to be over finally. We sat down to wait since we were told it would be at least half an hour. As we were waiting a car pulled into the street and decided to park behind my car. The driver noticed she was blocking a driveway and decided that instead of moving up the street in front of my car she'd park as close as humanly possible to the back of my car and hit it. She got out, looked, shrugged her shoulders and walked off. Normally I'd be screaming blue murder at the bitch but I was just so gobsmacked I was actually lost for words.  The only saving grace of the whole incident was that I had been too lazy to take the bike rack off the back of my car after BMX the night before so she dented the bike rack and not my actual car.

Eventually the RACQ man showed up, let me back into my car and I went to work. Upon my arrival I found that Jon had told everyone in the building what had happened so the rest of the day was a universal 'pick on Kaitee' day.

Now how's that for a bad day? :p