#4: The Gift of Worst-Case Scenario
SATIRE
Dearest Reader,
While it’s true the grass often seems greener on the other side, it is also true — for me at least — that on yet another side the grass seems itchy, dead, and swimming in anthills. That is because, amidst my many talents, I was given the gift of Worst-Case Scenario. Some (my therapist) may call this “anxiety'“ or “wildly unhelpful.” But in a world where we’re always striving to be better, I like to remind myself things can always get astronomically worse.
This past Christmas, I went home to Indianapolis to celebrate with my family. I immediately got COVID-19 and promptly passed it to two of my sisters. A Christmas miracle! An hour or so after I tried to gaslight myself out of believing my very obviously-positive test, I had a session with my (fairly new) therapist. She was understanding and sympathetic as I video-called in from my car in the church parking lot behind my childhood home. #BibleBeltBitch
In an effort to — I don’t know, make me feel better? — she asked, “I know this is scary, but you’re young and healthy. What’s the worst that can happen?” I spent the next eight minutes ($25.44 worth of my session) weaving a tale of death and destruction so wide-sweeping that my mild case of Omicron resulted in the death of everyone I love, the fall of several world powers, and karmic repercussions reverberating through multiple lifetimes. If nothing else, your girl knows how to tell an imaginative tale.
My therapist said, “Okay, we’re never doing that again,” with a look of…let’s call it horror? She took copious notes during my speech, and so help me god if she tries to outline it as a feature film idea, I will sue.
It’s important to note that Worst-Case Scenarios are not specific or special to me in particular. I just have the uncanny ability to detail them for you and ruin your day. Anyone can fall victim to things getting much worse than they could possibly imagine. Take Maggie, from The Great British Baking Show (Collection 9 on Netflix, but I believe Season 12 overall?) for example. *Light spoilers ahead.*
She had a particularly rough start to biscuit week, and during her after-bake interview said, “I can only go up from here, there is no going down.” Optimistic words, that I hope helped her through the technical, but not entirely true.
What if, for instance, there had been a mixup with the ingredients for Maggie’s sandwiched jammy biscuit in the next challenge? Perhaps a technical error caused the jam for Maggie’s biscuits to be laced with poison, resulting in the harrowing on-camera death of Prue and Paul and the effective end of the Great British Bake Off (GBBO) franchise.
This would certainly tank happiness levels around the world, with our most fool-proof coping show ending in tragedy. Not to mention Maggie would become Public Enemy #1 and be sentenced to some serious jail time. Her loved ones would invariably leave her as she rots away in prison, guilty of soggy-bottomed biscuits and the death of our beloved GBBO hosts.
Things may start to look up when the prison warden takes note of her love for baking and assigns her to work in the cafeteria kitchen. But once there, she’d discover the true horrors of prison food. When she’d try to tell the other inmates of her discoveries, they would surely turn against her. How could they allow her to cook for them when she was in the slammer for poisoning food in the first place?
As the other inmates plotted her demise, she would suffer to the point where, for her own safety, she’d be relegated to solitary confinement. There, she would live out the rest of her days in a padded room, haunted by the ghost of Paul Hollywood. But not haunted by the ghost of Prue Leith, because she might be a comforting presence even supernaturally.
So not to be dramatic or anything, but it could absolutely go down from there. Watch yourself, Maggie.
Just remember, anything can be the end of the world if you stew on it for long enough! Not to mention the actual end of the world hurtling toward us due to climate change. C’est la vie!
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Thank you, as always, for reading and supporting my silly little brain.
Worst-Case Sayonara,
Ariana