Me: What are these, anyway? Mums?
Mark: Don’t know. But they’re probably cursed!

I did something that could only be described as unequivocally, sublimely disastrous. It beats the incident of accidentally getting locked in a cemetery at night, giving my friend a black eye with a badminton racket, even the number-2-in-Brooklyn-bridge-traffic-in-the-back-of-a-mini-van fib pales in comparison. And that’s saying a lot.

Like most respectable disasters, it started out simple and got more complected as it progressed. I was on my way home from the post office when an unusual sight caught my eye: an arrangement of 5 candles (unused) and a bouquet of white flowers (fresh, still in wrapping paper) sitting on the ground at an intersection. Whoa, Nelly! I looked around, expecting to see a horse and a carriage at the minimum – maybe even a man in a white tux – but saw nothing. Why on Earth anyone would leave such pretty flowers to die on the sidewalk, was beyond me. I couldn’t imagine one possible situation that could justify such sinister treatment of the flora. The light changed, and I crossed the street with a bundle in my hands.

To my disbelief and elation – I thought I had died and gone to freeloader heaven! – the same arrangement was awaiting me on the other side!!! What glorious luck! I grabbed the other bouquet and skipped home, thinking of the vase to put them in.

Do you sense where this is doing? Mark got home and saw the flowers. When he found out how they were obtained, his facial expression went from ‘normal’ to ‘pure horror’ in about .5 seconds. He told me exactly what they were for: someone had died on that intersection and the flowers were there to honor their memory!

Holy shit. I stole a dead guy’s flowers!!!

To describe my emotional state as ‘ashamed’ would be like calling porcupine a cozy, snugly animal. How could I live to be 27 and not know of such things?! Granted, you rarely see these memorials in the city, but still! And what if someone saw me taking them and recognizes me later on the street?!! Oh, the horror! The guy who had put them there was probably just coming back with a lighter, too. At least I had the decency to leave the candles alone.

I honestly considered taking them back. But the prospect of encountering the livid face of a relative – who, undoubtedly, knew I’d come back and was hiding in the bushes, with a chainsaw – threw a wreck in that plan.

Now I am officially going to hell. How can one top stealing flowers from a dead guy?! You wait, someday I’ll be dead and someone will steal my flowers.

Deerlings: have you ever done something so embarrassing, so mortifying, you could just die? I need your stories to make me feel better!