- Having a pane of Soviet-grade glass fall on my head when I was 3
- Getting lost in my neighborhood in the dark when I was 8 and coming home, crying, to have my mom lecture me about rapists. Of course, there is no such thing as sex in Russia, so it wasn’t really rapists, but “Bad People.”
- Getting into a near-fatal car accident with Mr. B. We were both unharmed, the car was totalled.
- Working an internship in a country that went to war. I was at the beach.
- Same country. God screws me over.
- Falling off a horse getting ready to go into a gallop.
- Going to West Philadelphia.
- Snowmageddon.
- Experiencing a 5.8-level earthquake on the second day that I chose to work in a 50-story building, on floor 42. If you’ve never experienced an earthquake that high up, it feels like all your paranoia and Russian pessimism have finally been justified.