GelatNOOOOO

Hello friends. If we were in a room together, this is when I would say, “walk with me” and pull you aside to have the following conversation. But we’re not in the same room together, hence the blog. If you really feel like it, you can take a stroll with your device that has internet connectivity and pretend that we’re having a nice little walking chat, but otherwise, get ready. This one’s a doozy.

It was a crisp September evening in Viterbo, the kind of night that’s a bit colder than anticipated but not quite cold enough to deter purchasing a double chocolate gelato for the simple fact that it’s Saturday and the gelato shop is still open and gosh darn it if I’m not going to take every possible opportunity to consume gelato while in Italy despite the fact that my cardigan is not cutting it and there’s a slight breeze and it’s a bit chilly. That kind of night. You know the one.

I digress. There I was, about four bites in to a double chocolate gelato, half chocolate, half dark chocolate, a concoction a friend so aptly named the “Kayla Special,” (which I still don’t have a picture of. I send my most sincere, chocolate-mustache-laden apologies) just moseying up the street. Things were lovely. The moon was high in the autumn sky and I, surrounded by some particularly wonderful new friends, had gelato in hand and joy in my heart. This was the life.

In retrospect, it was the kind of night that was playing out so nicely that I really should have anticipated something terrible happening, just for the simple fact that life always decides to smack you in the face just when you least expect it.

But, alas, I’m generally woefully optimistic and continued to walk up the street with a blissful naiveté that is rivaled only by the young and the sugar-high, which are frequently one in the same, i.e. me. I was in the middle of a surprisingly engaging conversation about my friend’s dinner, which consisted of a beef kabob on a homemade skewer. I turned my head to make some sort of acknowledgment of how impressive I found her cooking skills and to say something like “kabobs really stack up well against other meat and vegetable options” when suddenly I just wasn’t walking anymore.

Confusion.

There was this terrible ringing in my ears.

And, as if time itself had slowed to give a hearty belly laugh to this particular moment, I slowly pieced together that just a second ago I ran smack into a pole on the sidewalk.

With my face.

And then, to literally add insult to injury, I looked down to my hand to see that upon impact I tensed up, crushing the gelato cone in my grasp. Just the sad, empty, end of the cone remained between my feeble fingers, crushed like my hopes and dreams. I, being no stranger to the hilarity of slapstick comedy, fell to the curb in the kind of laughter that makes it impossible to breathe in the best possible way, and paid no mind to the sizable egg that was growing on my forehead. I sincerely hope that somehow my walking negligence was caught on surveillance and that a large Italian man working a night shift fell out of his chair laughing at me. In a strange way, that would make me feel better.

As my friend Jordan put it: “Kayla, you lost two things tonight. Your gelato and your dignity.”

As I turned to give a scathing look to the stationary entity that so clearly jumped into my path, I saw this:

This is the truest representation of disappointment I have ever personally witnessed. But all in all, it was a good night. And now, I have a go-to story for “Hey Kayla, what’s the most embarrassing/funniest/saddest/ thing that has ever happened to you?” I’ve got it all. And a bruise on my head. Hollaaa.