Throughout my life, I’ve made hundreds of mistakes. Most of those mistakes I just forget about and move on. Some had a big impact on my life.

My family were on vacation out of the country for two weeks. We were staying at different places. It was the second to last day of our vacation, and our aunt let us stay with her for the night.

After a long day driving around the market, in a van with eight people in it, we finally decided to head back to our aunt’s house. The adults went to the living room to chat about the normal things adults chat about, while the kids went upstairs to get ready for bed. Being the foolish ten year old I was, I had only packed enough pants to last me a week and five days.

After taking a nice shower in the hundred degree weather, I went searching through my luggage for clothes. That’s when I realized that I didn’t have anymore pants. I stood frozen over my luggage, not knowing what to think. My brain analyzed the situation. No extra pants. All the other clothes are in the laundry and won’t be done anytime soon (we had to hang up the clothes outside back then). Can’t borrow my brother’s because they don’t fit. There’s no other guys in the house with pants my size.

Lost at that point, I asked my mother, who was on the other side of the door, what to do. Her solution was just as grim the situation was. She told me to borrow my cousin’s pants. I thought to myself, “Great idea! I’ll just borrow my cousin’s pants... who’s a girl.” At this point, she had given me only three options, which was more than what I had. One, survive the night and the next day only wearing underpants and a shirt. Two, borrow my cousin’s pink pants, lined with shiny jewels all over it. Three, borrow her skirt.

The last one was unreasonable, but my mother couldn’t resist giving the option. No matter which one I chose, I would still end up looking like an idiot. Clearly, I went with wearing the pink pants. At that point, I just had to survive one night of embarrassment. It didn’t help that my brother kept laughing about it and made jokes.

To this day, I look back to that one day and remind myself to always be prepared, because when you’re not, the consequences could be a nightmare.