The other day I read an article about a college professor
whose way of getting to know his new students at the beginning of the semester
was to ask them to write down what they felt would be the most stressful
situation in which they could imagine themselves ever becoming involved.
Most of them came up with fairly standard stress-inducers,
such as being pulled over by the police, getting caught cheating on their
significant others, or having their credit cards denied when attempting to make
an important purchase.
Their answers made me seriously think about what types of
situations most people might consider to be even more stressful than
those. Within minutes, I managed to
come up with at least a dozen different scenarios. Here are a few of them:
· The temperature is 102 degrees. You suddenly
find yourself trapped between floors in an elevator that contains two guys who
have just jogged five miles and do not believe in using deodorant. The music
blaring through the elevator speakers is, “It’s a Small World”…on a repeat loop
that is stuck playing it over and over again.
· You receive a gift card to a new ice-cream
shop that features an all-you-can-eat ice-cream buffet. After you carefully construct a giant sundae
with six different flavors of ice cream, you take just one bite and develop an
agonizing toothache with pain that shoots all the way up to your eyeballs.
· For three years, you faithfully play the
same lottery numbers every week without winning a thing. On the day you finally decide to change your
luck and play different numbers, your old numbers come up as the winners, with
a jackpot of $100 million.
· You spend all day perfecting your famous
ham, potato and cheese casserole to bring to your church’s holiday potluck
supper. All of your hard work pays off because your casserole is a big hit,
with the guests going for second helpings. On the way home, you turn on the car
radio and hear that Oinky brand ham, which you used in the casserole, is
involved in an emergency recall because it contains a virulent, highly toxic
bacteria.
· You’re driving home from a late-night
appointment when your car breaks down in an unfamiliar neighborhood. You look
around and happen to see some graffiti spray-painted on the side of a vacant
building…“This is the Demon Executioners’ private turf! Trespassers will be dismembered!”
· You wait all year for the annual
half-price sale at Harry’s House of Meat and stock your basement freezer with
50 lbs. of chops, roasts and steaks. Unbeknownst to you, the freezer coughs and
dies that same night, and you have no clue about it until a week later, when
you go down to the basement to retrieve the perfect roast for your in-laws, who
are arriving from Florida to spend the weekend. The minute you open the freezer, the smell of rotted meat gets
sucked up through the vents and permeates your house, making it smell like a
giant septic tank.
· A co-worker sets you up on a blind date
with a guy she says is in show business.
He turns out to be a sideshow attraction named “Shaggy Sherman,” the
world’s hairiest man.
· They say everyone has a double – an exact
look-alike. You discover that yours happens to be someone who’s on the FBI’s 10
most-wanted list.
· You can’t stand your boss. He’s grouchy, demanding and unappreciative.
Fed up, you secretly look for another job and are thrilled when a large company
hires you for a prestigious position with a salary to match.
Cackling to
yourself, you sit down and compose a letter of resignation – not an email or a
text message – a real letter, for dramatic effect, to send to your boss. In it,
you call him such endearing terms as “egotistical pond scum.” Two hours after
you mail the letter, the new company calls to tell you they’re sorry but the
person whose position you were supposed to fill has decided not to retire for
another year. And 10 minutes after that, your boss calls you into his office to
apologize for the way he’s treated you in the past and offers you a promotion
with a hefty raise.
You later are
arrested for tampering with the U.S. mail when a police officer finds you with
your head stuck in the corner mailbox.
So, if I were one of the professor’s students and had to
write down what my own personal most-stressful situation would be? I’m not sure, but I think it would involve
being trapped in a small room with my two very hyper and gaseous dogs, no
Hershey’s chocolate, no phone and no bathroom…right after I’ve just had two or three
cups of coffee.
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