I’m 30 going on 12

This may or may not be a true story.

Today Julia and I were wandering down Fourth Street, a veeerry swanky part of Berkeley, California. We look cute — all dolled up — never mind the holes in Julia’s shirt and the bike shorts I insist on wearing under my skirt. Yeah, we’re cute, and we’re wandering around the CB2 store making fun of the techno music that makes you want to shop and admiring their $25 file folders and shit.

It was all pretty tame and innocent when Julia discovered these little magnetic sphere things. They were pretty fun, I had to admit. She even managed to make them into a bracelet!! Way to go Julia!! If only I had my camera out for this magic moment…

The bracelet — held together only by the attraction of one sphere to another — fell apart!! Little magnetic balls were everywhere. We laughed uproariously and I bemoaned the lack of video footage as I helped Julia track down the balls.

We got most of them, but one was behind this desk, and I thought I could bend down and fish it out. Technically, I could have, but the fact of the matter was that at that moment I had a big ass purse in tow. And that big ass purse in tow bumped a shelf and knocked the display of picture frames off in a dramatic tumble of metal and glass.

We couldn’t hide from the crash. No, that moment found us shame-faced and staring at a pile of broken glass and unsalable merchandise. And the next found us running out of the store like 12-year-olds who neglected to listen to their moms’ advice, “Look but don’t touch girls!!”