A Tribute to an Unfortunate Friend

In the middle of my third year at Monsignor Donovan Catholic High School, a friend of mine had a very bad day. Now you must understand that this certain friend is often associated with the bad days he has and has become notorious for the bad stuff that seems to fall upon him. After the first two and a half years or toil and hardships, these days became funny to those simply observing. My friend, of course, is Ssempa Kisaalita, very dear to my heart and my memories.
This certain day was particularly normal, we went to school, said we hated it in the morning, hated even more during the day, and were relieved when we were able to go to lunch and have the usual to eat: nothing. That’s how our days went. We went to school, had no food for break, went to more school, had no food for lunch, went to more school, and finally finished playing some sport or other. Well on this memorable day, we did nothing different. At lunch, we begged for food from everyone else, and the person lucky enough to find something was attacked by everyone else until they either shared or had the food destroyed. That’s how our class is: we’re either full together or we’re hungry together.
Well on this routine day Ssempa happened upon some peanut butter crackers, a rare delicacy. Living by our motto, we were not about to let Ssempa eat those crackers without sharing and when he refused, we attacked. The crackers were soon crumbs. Now some may say “poor Ssempa” or “he didn’t deserve that” but the truth is, we all found it to be quite just. We all know the same thing would have happened had we been the ones with the crackers. The rest however, would never have happened to any of us, at any time in our life, in any shape or form. All the black cats, broken mirrors, walking under ladders, salt, or any other shape of bad luck could have given us as much grief as Ssempa’s luck gave him.
Why Ssempa likes the little fruit cups that haven’t been refrigerated and are packaged in formaldehyde, I don’t know but nobody else did. So when he got his hands on one of those grotesque slime food packages, we left him alone. Victorious, he went over to open it over the trash can and he must have had a little trouble getting the plastic seal of because the fruit cup bobbled up, was almost caught, and then plummeted into the trash can, leaving a hungry Ssempa just staring down. Now this was funny, we laughed, he made that sulking face that he makes at every turn of misfortune, and the moment was done. So far there’s hardly been anything different about the day, this kind of stuff happens all the time.
By this time we were probably two-thirds of the way through lunch and were excessively bored with the way things were turning out, though it was no surprise to us. Then by some stroke of divine will (this couldn’t have been good luck, Ssempa Kisaalita is immune to good luck and will be the first to tell you) Ssempa was able to come by a dollar. Yes, in those days a buckaroo would get you an entire water battle. No it didn’t just buy you a measly twelve ounce Power-aid or four fifths of a twenty ounce bottle. It bought the entire thing. As I said, Ssempa came across an entire dollar, and decided he’d use it to buy a juice from the vending machine in the Den. That’s where Ssempa’s ill fate kicked in.
He made the purchase with ease, the machine didn’t eat his money, the drink came out fine, and it was even the drink he had asked for. I don’t remember if when he got the drink we chased him or he was just being clumsy again but either way, he fumbled the drink. It bounced around in his hands for a while and then fell with a splash to the ground. Now you might have already picked up on this but bottles don’t make a splash sound when they fall. They make a thunk or bump. However, this bottle definitely went “SPLASH!” Ssempa hadn’t even started to open the drink. All he did was drop the bottle and the lid split to pieces. The juice spilled out everywhere and Ssempa fell to his knees, closed his eyes, and let out a wail: “NOOOOOOOO!!” This is the kid whose soda had been thrown twenty feet in the air expecting to be caught, and when he wasn’t, exploded on the gym floor. The same kid whose pens routinely busted, once leaving behind a green trail as his book bag rubbed against the wall. The kid kneeling on the lunchroom floor was the same kid whose sodas routinely spontaneously exploded in his book bag, leaving a soppy mess and a dry mouth. Everything bad that could have ever happened, happened to Ssempa, and to those who knew him best it was hysterical.
We did end up helping clean it up if I remember correctly; we weren’t that cruel hearted. We all laughed in awe of Ssempa’s incredible consistent bad luck, and reminisced all the other times his drinks had exploded. The lunch ended with a lightened heart yet still the same hate for the dreaded routine. There was, in fact more school to go to, even though that day had been a day that I will remember for a while, and stuck out so much in my mind, that I wrote about it as my senior memory. It is not how I will remember Ssempa or my friends, but it will remind me of just how improbable it was for a drink cap to explode like it did. It would have happened to no one else, though millions buy drinks and thousands of lids may be less than quality. The one kid to drop a substandard drink bottle would have to be Ssempa, whose legacy of bad luck will never be forgotten.