The Loser Book

We actually have a book where we document our most Loser-ish experiences. Pete gave it to me as a Christmas gift one year in the early days of our relationship, before marriage or Corinne. The intro that he wrote for it goes something like this:

"The Loser Book- Dedicated to the good times when you get to laugh at someone else's expense. This book is devoted to recording the worst and stupidest moments in life. Whether dumb or just plain unlucky, it will have been recorded here. This book will be an ongoing legacy of the two dumbest and unlucky people on earth." He goes on to quote: "It takes a big man to cry. It takes a bigger man to laugh at him."

It's sort of like a competition, where the goal is to be featured in the book as little as possible. We have coined the phrase "that's one for the Loser Book" whenever the figurative anvil falls on someone's head. We also try to get a picture of the event and then the non-loser writes the entry. There's even a page at the end for keeping score. I won't say who is in the lead (we've gotten bad about keeping it updated the past few years), but suffice it to say we are both featured prominently, sometimes even as a not-so-dynamic duo. The picture at right is actually the award that we trade back and forth for being the Loser-du-jour. Anyway, I thought it might be amusing to include some of these entries in this blog (when I'm short on material like I am right now). I should also mention that, ironically, we lost the Loser Book for close to a year. I got "extra special super fantastic terrific mention for insisting that I had checked " 'that area' before" when we finally found it in a desk drawer. We both had to write "I promise not to lose the Loser Book" 100 times.

So just this past weekend we had a Loser Book-worthy incident. I shall call it:


"The Eyes Have It"

On our way to Ithaca for the above mentioned reunion, Pete was struck by the Loser arrow once again. We were driving in the Family Dorkster with Corinne in the back seat. She had been pretty good during the long drive, but was beginning to lose patience with being strapped in her car seat and was starting to become demanding. She wanted a drink of seltzer, and handed her sippy cup to Pete, who was in the passenger seat. There was a little bit of juice or something still in it so Pete wanted to dump the contents out the window. Given that the Family Dorkster was new (to us) and still nice and clean, Pete didn't want the juice to splatter all down the side of the van, so he leaned out a bit. I saw him scrambling and grabbing and assumed he had dropped the sippy cup. Turns out his glasses had flown off. We tried to find them (well, I tried. Pete was too blind without them to even be able to see the car, much less a pair of tiny wire rimmed glasses.) to no avail. They must have bounced into the grass and our search radius encompassed a half mile area due to my initial panic when he told me he lost them (instead of just stopping I chose to go to the next exit and turn around). I kept hoping that they might magnify and direct a ray of sunlight and set the grass around them on fire so I could find them (like in that episode of Little House on the Prairie where Mary and Adam get into a carriage accident on the way to... oh never mind. Nobody will get that obscure reference except Debbie). On the bright side I did see a deer drinking from a lovely babbling brook as I walked along the highway, so that was delightful. Also, twenty minutes later we passed an A&W with the little drive through stalls, so Pete was able to get a hot dog, which in his mind negated the entire unfortunate incident. Also lucky for Pete, I wear contacts and have an extra pair of glasses and we happen to have almost the exact same terrible vision (doesn't bode well for Corinne's vision), so he was able to make do with those for the weekend. And they aren't even too girlie. It would have been awesome if they had been tortoise shell and horn rimmed with rhinestones or something. It sucked for me because I had to wear my contacts for about sixteen hours a day, long past the point around 8 pm or so when I just want to gouge them out of my eyes for their dryness. I kept telling him to go to bed so I could have the glasses, which reminded me of Clash of the Titans, with the three blind witches who shared a single glass eye.

(Anyone with me on this one? No? Oh well.)

Along the lines of this most recent of Loser Incidences, there was the time that we were staying overnight at my mom's house for my Grandmother's 90th birthday party. I realized as I was taking my contacts out for the night that I had forgotten to bring a contact lens case, so I put them, with saline, into a small cup for the night. Come morning I went to put them back in and lo and behold, the cup was empty. It seems Pete woke up at some point, no doubt parched from too much alcohol consumption, and got himself a drink using my cup, which in hindsight I guess I shouldn't have left on the bathroom sink. He drank my eyesight. (For our wedding the following year one of my cousins sent me a twelve pack of contact lens cases.)

Are you starting to understand the whole "Loser Family" thing yet?