I guess many people, including me, learned that "snafu" was invented in the American army and was created from the first letters of the words Situation Normal All F***** Up. I looked up the derivation of "snafu" and found there is some disagreement as to the word's origin. Besides, the original N seems to have stood for "nominal". I guess that word's implication is that the situation is not what it should be.
We had a snafu in our area recently. Some painters were working on one of the local water towers and by mistake, made giant letters incorrectly spelling the name of the town "Plover". We discussed this at our lunch meeting and wondered just how the letters got shuffled into "Plvoer". One of the lunch guys had some good pictures of the mistake. When I looked up "Plover misspelling", Google showed 3 million hits.
The conversation got me thinking about personal mishaps. They occur in small form every day. When I toss something in the trash, I miss. Sometimes, the item manages to stick to my finger tip for a second and then break free, totally misaligning my toss. This morning, I poured milk into a bowl of flakes and the milk made a flake bounce from the bowl to the floor. That should not happen!
At age six or so, I dropped a bowl into my aunt's pigs trough. The bowl broke into sharp fragments and the pigs ignored them, cutting their snouts and ate while bleeding. I was horrified and screamed. My aunt came running and said it was ok.
In 4th grade, I took my shoes to the shoemaker, carrying them in my hand. When I got there, I had only one shoe. I don't know what happened. I had to do errands hauling groceries at the store until I earned enough to get new shoes. As a college senior, I got a job as a school bus driver. First day on the job, I drove the bus between a garbage truck and a delivery truck. It didn't fit and the garbage truck side mirror crashed through the bus window. Nobody was hurt but I was fired.
From that day on, I have made no more mistakes!
