When Good Decisions Go BadWe've all been there: You thought you were making a wise choice; it turned into a disaster. Now you've got some moving on to do.

No matter how young you are, you're never too young to learnhow to put your foot in your mouth, speak out of turn, act beforeyou think, and just generally embarrass the hell out of yourself tothe point where your face matches the color of your shockingly redChristmas stocking. Although I am generally the type to keep mymouth shut until I know exactly what I want to say and remain stilluntil I know exactly what I want to do, I nonetheless learned theselessons when I was barely old enough to zip up my own jacket.

It seemed innocent enough; my class (I don't recall whatgrade I was in, but think "Ew, boys have cooties" time)was in an assembly hall, watching some sort of educational flick.The subject matter of the movie, oddly enough, escapes me at thistime. However, the haunting memory of me placing gum insomeone's hair does not. And not just "someone," buta friend. At least, she was my friend up until that point. Idon't know what came over me-it truly wasn't a maliciousact; I must have thought that it would be interesting to see if gumactually does stick to hair and, if so, how long it would stickfor. I always was somewhat of a mad scientist; if I hadn't goneinto publishing, I'd be out collecting plankton and puttingthem under a microscope.