By The Book of Man
These are the occasions where we get in over our heads or hit sudden regret, or anything that makes your stomach drop down to your shoes.
Reaching bare-handed into the blocked outside drain and feeling fur.
Treading barefoot into something that squishes.
Realising the treadmill is going too fast for you to stop sprinting without smashing your face in on the display.
Making a hand gesture to a car in front, only for that car to stop and the door to open, just as you notice it’s a car with blacked-out windows.
Waking up in the morning after a night out to see 150 WhatsApp notifications.
Getting your hand stuck in a hole.
Scratching the top of your head and feeling bare skin where the hair should be.
Doing up your zipper and feeling a sharp pain.
Walking across a field with your family and realising the ‘friendly cow’ has horns.
Realising you haven’t saved your work project as the wheel of death spins, contemplating a system restart.
Catching yourself in the mirror after the Zoom meeting to see visible breakfast in your beard.
Changing for 5-a-side and realising you had put on your wife’s big pants that morning by accident.
Walking out of a supermarket and realising you forgot to put on your mask for the entire trip, which may explain the ‘admiring glances’.
Kicking a stone like Cristiano Ronaldo only to see it arcing towards the taillights of a parked car.
Remembering halfway through a film that you put a pizza in the oven before it started.
Being outside the house and noticing 5% battery.
Biting into something ‘meaty’ in your vegan salad.
Seeing another man in a bar wearing the exact same shirt as you.
Feeling your new shoes skidding under you on the shiny floor of a nice restaurant.
When your child asks, ‘What happens when you die?’.
Forgetting the name of the person you’ve fallen into conversation with at a party, and then one of your friends comes over for an intro.
An incoming call from ‘Dad’.
Checking your phone on the train and realising you have no phone.
Seeing an email titled: ‘PDR’.
Being woken up by a new house sound.
Finding a grey pubic hair.
Picking your ear and going momentarily deaf.
The second immediately after you said ‘fuck it’ and did something rash.
Having a friendly personal invite to an event from your boss.
Walking the dog and seeing a text with the words, ‘are you in this meeting?’.
Shaving your chest hair too short and realising everything on your upper torso has to now come off.
Realising you’ve forgotten how to socialise at the first post-lockdown drinks.
Sitting down for a dinner party only to be told the hosts don’t drink.
When eating shellfish.
A notification saying your mum now follows you.
When you’re ten minutes into a conversation with your partner and realise you don’t know what it’s about.
The phrase: ‘There is a problem with Netflix’.
Driving without sat-nav.
Forgetting the words to your team’s song.
Answering the door to a delivery person only to realise they’re a gas meter person.
Meeting any adult born after the year 2000.