Some point, over a decade ago, Chief Oddball and a couple other friends were at my house, hanging out in my bedroom. Some time beforehand, one of those friends had given me a tiny cutout of Peter Tork’s head, taken from some magazine. Anyway, I was drinking a root beer, and at some point I spilled said beverage. Droplets of sugar water fell on the picture of Peter Tork, prompting me to scream out something along the lines of, “AAAAH! I spilled root beer on Peter Tork!”

Why do I mention this? Because, several days ago, something similar happened. I was sitting at my computer desk, with a tall, frosty glass of root beer next to me on my desk. I reached for the glass and — horror! — I knocked it over (mind you, this was a full glass of root beer I’d just poured). My desk (not to be confused with my computer desk, which is next to it) was immediately covered with root beer, and I went into panic mode. I immediately grabbed a load of towels from the linen closet and went to work. My wallet, my keys — and even a CD I had lying there — weren’t spared the wrath of the root beer. Even worse, some stuff not even on the desk was badly hit, as I found out once my panic had died down: both my sketchbook and every single page of a comic I had been dabbling with for the last several months were now brown and soaking wet. They had been sitting under my desk and had bore the full brunt of the root beer as it swept off the desktop.

Needless to say, I was crushed. But then something happened: I realized it could have been a lot worse.

You see, on the other side of the floor under my desk — opposite where the sketchbook had been — is a power strip. This power strip not only has my computer, monitor, and what not plugged into it, but also my cable modem — which supplies my house with not only internet access, but also cable television and telephone service. As soon as I realized this, my anger began to subside into an awkward form of relief — if I’d spilled the root beer in the other direction (and if the bookshelf on my desk had been set somewhat differently), there’s a good chance I might not be writing this post right now. If the worst that happened from my accident was a few soaked drawings and a sticky keyfob for the car — instead of potentially losing my PC, internet, phone and TV access — then maybe things weren’t so bad.

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