I had an epic fail yesterday so as I laughed at the mistake I made, I thought about other times in my life where I’ve had major goof-ups. A few solid ones came to mind, and a few that I was hoping I’d forget about. The first I’ll share with you takes place in a Coast Guard Day softball game. My dad was in the Coast Guard and on this particular day, he let my brother and I play in the softball game. I was probably 12 or 13 at the time. I had seen this on TV so at one point when I hit a ball to the infield, I decided to slide into first base… head first. Let’s just say I ended up back in the dugout because the mud I slid in wasn’t as slippery as I thought it would be. Dove towards first, slid a little, stopped sliding before I even reached first base! Embarrassing. Then to top it all off, I cried. What a sissy.
There’s another embarrassing softball story, but this was in college. And again, I was sliding. I rounded second base and sprinted towards third. The throw came in and the third baseman tagged me, I was out. But we were arranged in such a way that when he pulled out of the tagging position, he had to toss my legs to the side. I took that as an arrogant assault so I became visibly angry. Realizing I took this the wrong way, he offered his hand to help me up, to which I rejected and popped up on my own. Unfortunately I got up too fast for my own good and ended up falling backwards. It was the most embarrassing moment of my college career, and that includes the few times I crashed my bike riding down a hill.
Another epic fail while I was in college involves my brother, yet again. This time it was his college graduation. Me, being the techy video fanatic, brought along my video camera to record the once-in-a-lifetime event. It was a great day! The battery was charged, I had a tape in the camera and things were looking up. I recorded clips throughout the ceremony and when it was his turn to walk across the stage, I was ready. Or so I thought. Checking the video afterwards, I made a giant mistake. You know how sometimes you can be recording when you don’t think you are, then not recording when you do think you are? So I recorded him walking up the ramp to the stage, then nothing, then him walking back to his seat. I completely missed him receiving his accolades as he shook hands with faculty crossing the stage. I’m such an idiot!
I owe an apology to my brother-in-law for the next epic fail. It was a beautiful day in the Gulf of Mexico. The guys in my family went out for a fishing trip in hopes of catching grouper, snapper, rock bass, whatever we could. My bro-in-law hooked something big. It took him a good while to reel it in, and whatever it was put up such a fight that we all took turns reeling. Towards the end he took the pole back and I assigned myself video duty. It was a huge nurse shark from about 90 feet down! It was amazing. I’d show you the video here but much like the disaster that was my brother’s graduation, I hit record to capture the event, only to realize when I hit the button to start recording, it was actually stopping the recording. I got about a 1-second view of that big fish. Dang it, Ben!
And to circle back around to my most recent epic fail… it was yesterday. I set out to capture the total solar eclipse in video fashion so I planned and prepped. Practiced and packed. On eclipse day I was ready. I arrived a couple hours ahead of time to get a good spot. I wanted to record 2 separate videos… 1. A 360-degree view of the park where I watched the eclipse and 2. a timelapse of the Parthenon there at the park. The 360-video went off without a hitch, but when I went to start recording the images for the time-lapse on my GoPro, the information window said “no SD card.” My attempt at a cool time-lapse was eclipsed by my own silly forgetfulness. As it turns out, I was practicing time-lapse shots in my back yard and after transferring footage from the SD card to my computer, I forgot to return the SD card to the GoPro. Soooooooo instead of a cool shot of the Parthenon, enjoy my practice time-lapse of mushrooms in my back yard. You’re welcome, America!
-Out of the Wilderness
Out of the Wilderness 