You know that story, I can’t remember where it’s from, if it was tumblr or reddit, but this woman was a DM for a d&d group and gave her players, that were all men, golden star stickers for things like, showering, not talking over each other, being respectful, like basic shit like that, and I feel like I fell into something extremely similar and I just felt like a teacher/mom figure for this really big friend group that consisted of all men with bad social skills and there was a point where I wanted to distance myself and I didn’t really have a way and things happened in the friend group where I ended up like blocking everyone and I honestly feel so relieved
so in an attempt to actually use positive thinking, anytime i fuck up and my brain reacts as if ive cause a minor apocalyptic event, i compare my fuck up to the 4 minute fuck up committed by the crew of the uss william d porter.
and only today, as i was having to explain what happened to my mom when i was explaining the whole comparison thing, did i realise that most people dont know about it and ive decided that needs to change because its objectively hilarious.
...which is a weird thing to say about an event that occured on a warship in 1943, specifically november 14th.
see the uss william d porter was a fletcher-class destroyer but you dont need to know what that means, just that she had guns that went bang bang and that she was escorting another ship, the uss iowa, to cairo.
while they were on their way there, they performed some gun trials like testing the anti-aircraft guns or the torpedos. and while they were running a torpedo drill, the crew of the porter managed to fire a live torpedo straight at the iowa which you know, in terms of a list of things to do while escorting a ship, shooting a torpedo at them is not on that list.
especially if the president of the united states is on board.
yeah so fdr was on board and the gun trials were actually his idea, and part of the trials was that they were conducted under radio silence.
and that means the crew of the porter couldnt just call the iowa to be like "move out the way, we accidentally shot a torpedo at you."
but they did have signal lamps and you know, the signalman on board was trained to signal this exact kind of message.
...and uh never mind, the signalman did manage to successfully tell the iowa that a torpedo was coming toward them but wasnt as successful when it came to the direction the torpedo was coming from.
not all hope is lost though because the signalman could still use the signal lamp to correct his previous mistake and-, never mind, he announced that the porter was reversing, which she wasnt.
yeah so at catastrophic mistake number 3, they broke radio silence to warn the iowa and she managed to turn out of the way just in time which meant no one got hurt. and even though the inquiry into the incident led to chief torpedoman (fantastic job title btw) lawton dawson being sentences to hard labour, fdr intervened and waved away his sentence, saying it was all an accident.
but yeah, so thats my new measure for "how much did i really fuck up?" and when i compared accidentally picking up a pencil case without a tag on it in wilko, turns out it was a very minor fuck-up. yes, the cashier had to ask another worker to grab a duplicate so they could scan the barcode, but i didnt nearly kill the president during wartime via accidental friendly fire
gotta be honest and say it's insane to me that a bunch of people 'misremembered' nelson mandela dying in prison in the 80s even though he lived to become the president of south africa in the 90s and instead of thinking 'wow, i really should learn a bit more about international politics outside of north america and europe because not knowing such a basic fact like this about one of the most influential political figures of all time is kind of embarrassing', they became convinced that this was proof that parallel realities exist and they were having memories of an universe where mandela died in prison somehow. that's presumptuous on a level i can barely conceive of
Cackling at people being like "finally Buck has someone to go home to and talk to about his day!" because like, a) he has always, historically, gone to Maddie and the firefam to talk about everything because he's a yapper so he's always had someone and b) this is gonna be tay kay all over again because this is just BT 2 Electric Boogaloo. He's gonna try and yap and get an eye roll, bad advice, and a dismissal, and the audience will watch him fold in on himself while his partner makes the conversation about them because that's all they care about. Then we'll see Buck going to rant to Eddie while Eddie just listens to him yap away with big heart eyes, lets Buck go until he runs out of steam, and then Eddie will grip his shoulder and make solid eye contact like he always does and say something simple and profound that hits exactly at the heart of what Buck needs to hear. And the audience will watch Buck unfold and open up like a sunflower to the sun, and Eddie will preen, satisfied that he did his job well and then someone will write an article about how important male friendships are.