I’m a Panicker: A Cautionary Tale

Some people can be described as calm, cool, dare I say collected. And, while I’m a typically laid back kind of female, I am a panicker, which is probably not even a word. It’s not that I don’t know what to do, but it’s that I want to fix the situation so quickly that sometimes I don’t exercise the best judgement.

Take this long story (or warning, if you will) as a example and try to use the 10 deep breath method in the future. If I can help one panicker from almost getting arrested and or deeply traumatized, then I have done my job:

My best friend was out of town and asked me to watch her house. To which I replied, of course, best friend, anything for you! To which I really meant, HELL YES, you’re house is 10 times nicer than mine, you have a stocked fridge/wine cabinet and a ginormous bathtub.

What better way to spend a Saturday than to slather expensive fancy creams that aren’t yours all over your face and bod?

As I was drawing my bath (just like an aristocrat!!) I felt something burning. And that something was my face, which apparently does like to get fancied upon by exfoliating peels.

A normal person would just slowly move over to the sink, maybe grab a washcloth and rinse the offending substance off his/her face. Think that’s what I did?

Ha! Not at all. I immediately thought about my precious face falling off and scrambled outside to cut a virgin leaf of aloe vera to put on my BEET RED face. Now, at this point in the story, I cannot stress to you enough how red my face was. LIKE A BEET!

If you are a panicker, I know that you have already looked around the room for the nearest place to escape when this story gets too nerve wracking. I encourage you to go ahead and sew up your strategy because shit’s about to go down.

You what’s not cool about having a maid? They do stuff that you normally don’t do, like fold your socks or LOCK THE FREAKING DOOR FROM THE INSIDE SO SOMEONE WHO GOES OUTSIDE JUST LOOKING FOR A LITTLE ALOE FOR THEIR SEARING FACE GETS LOCKED OUT.

I’m locked out. Of a house that isn’t mine. In a really nice neighborhood. With no keys. I’m starting to blackout and planning my survival strategy if I have to spend the night in the garage.

It’s starting to get chilly outside, which is kind of odd but….oh my Lord, I’m wearing a robe. Not a plush, thick, stayed-at-the-Ritz-and-gangked-it robe, but I pauper’s robe made out of the thinnest, most see-through material imagined.

So I have to get myself together. I’m getting back in that house because I don’t want to spend the night in the garage and my friend’s dog is inside probably drowning in the bathtub.

I look around the backyard looking for objects that can help me. Like one of those finders puzzles at the dentist office where the kid in front of you who gets Invisalign while you get metal brackets already circled in all the good ones.

Here’s what I see: a grill, a rose bush, a crow bar, a refrigerator with no beer in it, a kitchen window. THANK THE LORD! I’ll just break one teeny tiny window, shimmy myself through and before I actually had the chance to think my idea through, one of the panels was smashed.

When the panic subsides and I realize what I’ve done, I see that the window is actually about 10 feet off the ground. And, one of my thighs wouldn’t be able to fit through it. Errr…no problem. I’ll just stand on this small chair and reach my hand in, unlock the window and we’re set. Oh, the window’s painted shut WHO THE HELL DOES THAT?!?!

I’m going to die. No, it’s fine. Jesus, get ahold of yourself, you’re clothed in a see-through robe, with a bright red face, no shoes and a crowbar in your hand.

So, I do the only other thing I could think of. Went to the neighbors house and start crying. If the teenage girl who opened the door wasn’t shocked by my poorly covered womanhood, she certainly had her fingers 9-1-1 when I started crying. Or maybe when she answered the door and I said “Hi, ma’am, I need some help” and my left boob was exposed.

But, she let me use the phone and then became the person who was second-most traumatized by this whole ordeal. Then I remembered that I only knew four phone numbers: mine (useless), my best friend’s (whose house I had just attempted to break into, awesome), my parent’s house (not a snowball’s chance in hell) and my friend L.

L. picked up and I convinced her to come over and help me (I’ll be the one crying on the porch, possibly getting picked up by police for prostitution and/or burglary)

She came and got me, nearly peed her pants at the sight of me and gave me to courage to call my friend who was out of town. She picked up, I started crying again (jeez, I’m such a freak) and then she reminded me that there was a key on the ledge inside of a window at her house.

“Do you feel comfortable breaking a window?” she asked.

“I’ve never done it before, but I think I can muster it,” I lied. Now, why would I lie when I knew she was coming back the next day and would obviously see that I did in fact break another window. I DON’T KNOW. It was the panic talking.

So, in my almost-nekkidness, but this time bolstered by an accomplice, I broke another window and successfully reentered the house. Sweeping up the broken glass really hit home was a dumb shit I had been to think I could scale a brick wall and shove my fat ass through a dollhouse window.

That’s a lesson to you all, kids. Don’t panic. Or, if you are going to panic, please put down the crowbar.

(Side note: I really wish I was better at drawing on the computer – or as I like to call it, electronic drawring – because I think this would be much funnier with pictures, but you’ll just have to dust off your imaginations and make it happen.)