A Series of Unfortunate Events

- Introduction -
The day of October 23rd in the year 2010 will go down as one of the strangest days in Nathan history filled with unfortunate but memorable series events. The day’s plan was a simple one: make some food, go to New York to visit friends and go home. That’s more or less exactly what happened, but with unforeseen twists before the day even really got started.

Recently, my friends, Vivian and Cindy, had started a small business of selling corn and mango pudding to in-turn donate their profits to charity. That day they were planning on preparing some food at Cindy’s house and delivering them to friends in the city. We were all planning to visit our good friend Victor who just returned from a trip to India in the city later that night, so we decided to all go together, sell food and visit Victor as well.

- Chapter 1- Food and Menlo
After Vivian and I arrived at Cindy’s, we quickly realized we were short on Romano cheese and whipped cream for the food prep, so Cindy and I took Vivian’s car to the market to get some more supplies. While at the market we decided to go to the closest Taco Bell which was in Menlo Mall (not really on the way or convenient in any way).

Our friend Jess works at American Apparel in the mall so we went in with the chance that she might be working. A girl that sort of looked like her was working the counter, but she had some Halloween make-up and big sunglasses on so it was hard to tell. I yelled “Jess!” while hiding among the clothes racks while Cindy watched if she looked. She didn’t and we left. I double checked to make sure it wasn’t her later, it wasn’t. Good start to the day.

- Chapter 2 - Car
On the way back from the mall and just down the street from Cindy’s home we get rear-ended by a lady in a Jeep. The cops came and since we were in Vivian’s car our friend, Paul, drove her to the scene also scratching his bumper on the curb while pulling up. In the meantime we sat on the guardrail while eating 5-layer burritos and Chalupas. Once the paperwork was completed and we were set to go we got back in Vivian’s car and...it wouldn’t start.

We tried to get the engine going for a minute or so when we started hearing someone yelling “GO!!!” outside. It was the cop who had blocked the entire street so we can get back on the road safely. Vivian (as innocent as possible) said “...it won’t start...” Thankfully he had a battery pack he used to jump the car, and we finally headed back to Cindy’s house.

- Chapter 3 - Engine running and locks that work too well
Once we got back to Cindy’s house we found Paul sitting in his car in the parking lot because he couldn’t get into Cindy’s house without her there. While we headed inside to finish up the food preparations we decided to leave Vivian’s car running in the parking lot so it could charge the battery. Earlier that day we discovered that Cindy’s doorknob was broken and it wouldn’t lock. On getting back, we discovered that we managed to lock the door, but the problem was that we couldn’t unlock it now. We also discovered Cindy’s house is secured pretty well during our attempts to break-in through windows and side doors. I ended up jamming Paul’s D&B card in the door so we can actually finally get back to Cindy’s. After a couple minutes sitting in the kitchen rethinking everything that had happen so far, we realized Vivian’s car was still running outside with the key in the ignition and unattended. It was still there when we got back and perhaps our luck was beginning to turn.

- Chapter 4 - New York
At this point we assumed that one of two things can happen: 1) things start getting better and we start getting lucky, or 2) unfortunate events keep occuring and the day becomes the best story in my repertoire. We started knocking on wood (aka Vivian’s head) whenever we went through all of the horrible situations that could pan out for us, and indeed our luck began to change.

Only a couple unfortunate things happened for the duration of the day in NY. All of which involved cars. The first was when Vivian and Paul decided to walk the food for delivery when we were stuck in traffic. Cindy volunteered to take Vivian’s place as the driver, but once they were gone and the traffic started to move, Cindy was still sitting in the back seat doing nothing. Surprisingly we didn’t get honked at or anything while she frantically ran around the car to the driver’s seat.

The second was when Cindy managed to get into the most awkward parking spot on 2nd Ave. She was blocking the bike lane and everyone thought she was trying to drive in the bike lane, so the honking and yelling began from drivers, pedestrians and bikers. There was also a nice gentleman that offered to park the car for us, but we kindly declined.

Once we met up with Victor we made him drive for the duration of the night in an attempt to reduce the chances of more things going wrong, but after we left his place and started our way back we found ourselves on a road tour of NY. Bring us to our third unfortunate event in NY, we accidental missed our exit twice and resulted in our tour of Brooklyn and up the FDR opposite the right way home.

This last unfortunate event was unfortunately not unfortunate for us, but when we finally got ourselves facing the right direction we saw a Rastafarian man about to get into a cab when it took off without him. As we passed he had his hands up in the air with a face of shock and unbelief. I hate to say it but it was probably cause he was black because the same cab picked up two girls only a few yards down the same street after he ditched the Rasta.

- Conclusion -
I love stories and when things go wrong I don’t see them as going wrong. I see them as the makings of a good story to tell folks when the for some reason the conversation becomes relevant. After all that, things could have been better, but they could have been a lot worse still. Luckily God favored us and we lived to tell the story of unfortunate events that occurred on October 23rd in the year 2010.