Catalog of Mishaps and New Ideas for Terrorism

Perhaps because I have to spackle my nose to go out since the Rudolph Incident, I’ve been sticking close to home the last couple of days. This may explain why the number of things I have accidentally dropped, broken or flung across the room has gone up. To give you an idea, in the last two days alone I have:

- Dropped a glass filled with garlic salt, which shattered.
- Boiled rice water all over the stove top right after cleaning it.
- Spilled rice all over the counter and floor when trying to finish off the curry from last night.
- Flung carton of yogurt across the room while trying to put away the groceries. It burst open.

These are all minor mishaps that are within normal parameters for me. But last night I did something worse…

Our house has a sauna, which is one of the reasons we bought it, and last night we used it. It’s very warming and relaxing to sit in the hot steam in winter and we used the time to speak of various things, such as vacations we don’t have time to take and why we’re both working so hard since we moved back to Munich.

I was absentmindedly worrying a lose fingernail tip and when it came off tossed it without thinking into the hot sauna rocks. After about 5 seconds the air filled with noxious smoke that reminded me a bit of the hair-cum-blow-dryer smell from the dorm bathrooms at boarding school (only without the Aquanet) and Ralf sat up and glared at me in horror.

‘Did you just throw a body part in the rocks?'

'Erm. . . no. Not a body part as such. Just a fingernail.'

'Are you completely insane? It smells like Auschwitz in here!’

I thought that was a little harsh but it did smell really bad so I apologized. ‘Sorry, darling, I wasn’t thinking.’

‘Gah!!!’ Ralf stood up and ran out.

Ralf continued to lecture me for several minutes while we were relaxing on the deck chairs between sessions. ‘Even for you. .. . totally over the top. . . most disgusting thing anyone has ever done. . . ‘

Finally I had to break in. ‘OK, I get it. Burning body parts bad. Now get OFF me!’

Silence reigned for a few minutes and then was broken by an evil chuckle from Ralf. My eyes snapped open and locked on him warily to make sure he wasn’t holding an axe or something. He's been under a lot of stress lately.

‘What now?’ I was now feeling a bit testy myself and seeing no axe I went with it.

Unexpectedly, he grinned. ‘I just thought of something. Imagine if someone pulled a stunt like that at a public sauna, like flinging in a toenail on the way out.’

I started to giggle. ‘You could go with a whole bag of toenail clippings and put them all in.’

‘They’d have to evacuate!’

‘That’s so evil! How come no one has thought of this???’

'We should start saving. . . '

We were laughing hysterically by now at the thought of dozens of uptight, naked Germans from various walks of life having to run out of a public sauna.

*Author's note: 'Uptight' and 'naked' are two words you don't normally find used together outside of Germany, but it works because the Germans are fairly uptight about everything except nudity.

By the time we were finished laughing about our evil plans for world domination through random acts of spa terrorism the sauna was habitable again and all was forgiven.

And my nose is healing nicely.