SOMETIMES

Sometimes your earbuds get caught in one of your office chair wheels. Sometimes in the process of extracting them, you accidently stretch them too far and you end up pulling a bunch of brightly colored little wires out at one end. Sometimes you realize that your earbuds are the only ones that fit into your very fancy cell phone and you don’t have a replacement pair on hand.

Sometimes you believe yourself to be the worlds most crafty man and you re-attach all of the little wires with a magnifying glass, testosterone, and a soldering gun. (Sometimes you blow on the end of the soldering gun when you are finished like some sort of geeky gunslinger.) Sometimes the smoke from the solder makes you cough and gives you a sore throat for about 15 minutes, which makes you wonder if solder smoke is a carcinogen. Sometimes you step back to look at your handiwork and you decide that the whole repair job looks a bit too flimsy to withstand the rigors of your day to day life.

Sometimes you have the brilliant idea to cover the affected area with a dollop of hot glue which would strengthen the connected wires and make everything look less shifty. (Sometimes your brain imagines that you are an amazing and talented hot glue sculptor and that you will be able to make the glue patch blend right into the whole cord. Sometimes your brain is sorely mistaken. )

Sometimes you are lazy and you don’t want to wait for your old hot glue gun to heat up, so you grab a lighter and begin to heat up one end of a stick of hot glue. Sometimes you hold the lighter a little bit too close and you set fire to the end of your stick of hot glue. Sometimes you panic a little bit because you realize that you are holding a short molten glue-fuse which is sure to burn you. Sometimes you overreact and fling the molten glue fuse onto your desk where it promptly makes a nasty glue mess.

Sometimes the glue spatter has an intimate affair with the vainer finish on your desk and decides to set up a permanent residence. Sometimes you bend a fingernail back trying to pick it off of there. sometimes you muster up enough courage to try your little lighter/glue stick trick again and you succeed in smearing some glue onto the affected wires.

Sometimes you burn your finger a little bit.

Sometimes the heat from the lighter toasts the glue lightly and you end up with a dirty looking grey patch of misshapen glue on your white earbud cord. Sometimes it looks like a big, gross booger stuck to said cord and you begin to ponder the negative social ramifications of wandering around in public with a booger on your earbuds. Sometimes you add more glue and try to shape it into a more aesthetically pleasing shape.

Sometimes you burn your finger again.

Sometimes you decide that it might be a good idea to color the gross booger patch with a blue sharpie marker. Then you will surely feel better because even though your patch still looks like a booger; nobody in their right mind would paint a real booger blue, so nobody will think that you were saving one for later there on your earbud cord.

Sometimes you are brilliant!

Sometimes you realize that blue sharpie marker does not bond very well with hot glue and you realize this AFTER taking your new ear buds for an inaugural test drive. Sometimes you come to the aforementioned realization when you look down at your tee shirt and find that it is now streaked with blue ink that has rubbed off the blue booger patch onto your shirt. Sometmes you realize that you have also gotten some of the blue ink on your hands and transferred it to your face.

Sometimes you look fantastic.

Sometimes you wash the ink off of your booger patch with an industrial solvent to avoid any future blue ink incidents. Sometimes the solvent eats its way through the booger patch and destroys the colorful little wires inside it. Sometimes your earbuds are really broken this time.

Sometimes you want to scream