My Friday the 13th luck

Call this damage control. This piece is related to, or should I say, a reaction to, last week’s column. Like what the title says, there are times you just can’t avoid bad things happening to you, and there are just some things beyond your control.

I don’t know if it had anything to do with the fact that the article came out on Friday the 13th and lady luck wasn’t on my side that day. It was just one of those bad-hair days. One must accept that crappy things happen, and I guess for a reason; it depends on how you understand the reason. Sure, you can set these incidents aside; at times, though, they stick to you like a tick sticks to your dog’s hide.

Unfortunately, I could not put this aside; I felt I had to do something about it. The whole day, Friday the 13th was just full of anxiety for me. Why? Because the right people weren’t given the credit they deserved, and since I knew these people, the feeling sucked all the more.

Imagine the horror when I saw that the wrong picture was used in my column last week, and that I wasn’t supposed to be in it (at least not in my trunks). The wrong picture was that of my swimming team, the older team of San Beda that didn’t win the award. My column was about the current swimming team that won the NCAA championship for San Beda. And it was our picture, not theirs, that was published. Sorry guys. I know it didn’t feel right.

After all, they were the ones who bagged that long anticipated trophy. They did the hard work, like waking up at dawn to dive into the cold water. And they are the ones who must now put up with our coach, a phase we have already passed. And we’re about to dub them as the "team" that wasn’t jinxed. Guilt, not to mention utter frustration, suddenly came over me when I saw that their picture didn’t make it to the page.

Funny thing was, a former teammate did not even notice the picture-switch and even asked me what was wrong with it. I wanted to hammer into his head the message— "We’re not supposed to be in the picture you @#$%."

There was another funny incident before that. As I crammed to caption the right picture, I realized I didn’t know all the names of the "newbies," that even though I’d seen them a couple of times I never got the chance to bond with them. Since I no longer had the pictures, my friend and I spent almost an hour guessing which name matched which face (if we could distinguish them at all) in that small negative we had to work with (guessing names can be so mind-draining!). We even had to compute the probability of our guesses —100 percent correct or less. But at least now I know their names already as if by instinct.

This mistake, however, was not intentional, of course. The error has been done and the only thing one can do now is to try to think of ways to remedy the situation or, in other words, damage-control. At least I also discovered that I actually have this ability to hide my frustration behind a smile, for one has to be cool in such a situation. At least I know that I don’t have to enroll in some anger management class — it does take a lot of will power though.

It’s a fact of life that everybody has to go through — anxiety that is. It’s just too bad I’m the unlucky one this time. It’s that feeling of working hard for something, expecting it would all be smooth-sailing, just to find out that it was a disappointment.

What to do when you’re disappointed or frustrated? Well it’s normal to run amuck for a while inside your household and make sure nobody finds out about it. Then after your nerves have settled, I guess you can finally think straight and figure out what to do. How? I cannot give any specific advice, I think it’s just really relying on your gut for the answer. Well, banging your head against the wall would help (it’s up to you if it’s literally or figuratively), but in my case, I guess this is the only way I can make up for it.

So here it is, perhaps now I can breathe.

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E-mail me at ketsupluis@hotmail.com.