#21 A sneeze.
My brother Eric has the loudest sneeze of any person I have ever met.  When it comes out of nowhere it scares you. Literally, it will make you jump.  You want to scream at him for scaring you but people can’t control sneezes.  It would be like yelling at someone for breathing.

#22  The meanest thing anyone has ever said to you.

When I was seventeen I decided to get my ears pierced.  Like most teenagers, I made this life changing decision at the spur of the moment.  Being seventeen I needed to have a parent or guardian give their permission.  I was at the Minnesota State Wrestling tournament so my Mom was not there and my Dad was very busy being the head wrestling coach.  Undaunted, I found a willing adult to pose as my mother.  When we got to the shop and I was sitting in the chair my pseudo-mother had a change of heart.  She threw up her hands and admitted that we were lying and that she wasn’t my mom. She explained the situation to the piercing girl who shrugged and said something along the lines of, “whatever,” and pierced my ears.  The mother and I were on cloud nine.  I had gotten my ears pierced and we hadn’t had to lie. We were absolutely giddy and riding an adrenaline rush.  When we got back to the hotel we ran into this woman’s son and breathless with laughter started to tell him the whole story.  Midway he cut his mom off and said, “Mom, I don’t give a shit.”  Instantly, the wind was out of our sails.  We had been so happy and wanted to share this funny story and he didn’t care.  Adult Heather can totally understand where he this boy was coming from.  He was stressed out, he was in the State Tournament, he was a teenage boy. I would also see this was more a reflection of him being terrible to his mother.  But seventeen year-old Heather, was DEVASTATED.  She heard, “Mom, I don’t give a shit about Heather.” Seventeen year-old Heather, was convinced that most teenage boys didn’t give a shit about her and this was concrete proof that all her self-doubts were absolutely spot on.  I am forty-one years old and I will never forget how terrible I felt in that elevator.

Thankfully, this story has a happy ending.  Over the years I have run into this person and he is not a monster.  In fact, he is a pretty decent person. I joke that becoming a great person is the worst thing he ever did to me.  How can I hold a grudge now? It would be akin to thinking Gandhi is a total jerk.  The teenager who said those words is gone.  The teenager who heard those words is gone too.

#23  A man jumps from the fortieth story of a building.  As he’s passing the twenty-eighth floor, he hears a phone ring and regrets that he jumped.  Why?

As Jerome was falling he heard the telephone ring and remembered the day that the nursing home called to tell him that his father had passed away.  His Dad had fought death off with both hands.  He went to the grave kicking and screaming and now here was his son giving up.  How could he do this?  Why didn’t he have the fight in him like his old man.

Jerome’s other “old man” heard this silent lament and suddenly the wind changed and Jerome landed with a thud on the awning over a small cafe.  He was broken in places he didn’t know he had but he was alive.