11 Of The Funniest Life Lessons I Learned The Hard Way

Like how you should never take your family canoeing in a flood

Photo by Kristopher Roller on Unsplash

If you happen to find yourself with the ability to learn many of life’s lessons with a relative degree of ease, then consider yourself incredibly lucky!

Whether it’s my clumsy, absent-minded nature, or a tendency towards momentary lapses in judgement, there are a few things that I’ve come to learn as a result of doing things the hard way, making my own mistakes, or literally just forgetting how to human. I hope you enjoy, and I want you to know that you have my sincere condolences if you relate.

1. The order that you put together an email should be: add attachments, write email body, add email addresses, send.

Let’s not have any repeats of the time I sent nothing except the word, ‘Hello,’ to my college professor, somehow missing the gmail window to unsend, before also forgetting to attach my research paper in the apologetic email and amendment to follow.

Believe me when I say, ‘please find attached’ just hits differently when there’s absolutely nothing attached to be found.

2. Don’t take your family canoeing in a flood.

This should really be a two-parter that starts with ‘don’t ever let anyone under the influence purchase a canoe.’

It was early afternoon on Christmas Eve, 2016, and my parents were probably on their third concoction of vegan eggnog and cinnamon whiskey. It had been raining for four days straight, and the river had burst it’s banks flooding our backyard, the woods behind our house, and the tennis courts across the street.

Bear in mind, we’re talking a proper flood, here, too: around 6–8ft deep in some areas, but it’s Alabama and the water is warm. Anyway, a few hours go by and my family and I are beginning to feel a little stir crazy locked up in the house together — and also maybe just drunk, in my parents case.

They make the executive decision that we should all go for a family canoeing trip, as mother nature was practically so kind as to drop the adventure off at our door-step…