Last Monday I began working on an assignment for my internship, which was to video-shoot Christ Community Church’s vacation bible school. Basically I was to get footage of the event and edit it into a video promoting their program. So, what started off as a great week quickly went down hill after an incident that happened Wednesday morning.

That morning I woke up, got an early workout in, ate a healthy breakfast and began my day! What a great start, right?! Well, I went over to UMI, the publication and production company I am interning at, to grab the equipment I needed to take video footage at vacation bible school. I walked into the building and headed straight for the closet where my boss told me to keep the equipment in after every use.

When I got to the closet, everything was in there but the camera. I continued to look around, I but couldn’t find it.  I was in a bit of a rush, so I began to walk over to my boss’s office when, out of the corner of my eye, I saw the camera bag sitting in another supervisor’s office. As I turned to walk into the office, it’s like the closer I got to the bag it began to have this a glowing effect around it. Like a beam of light was shinning down on the bag, giving it this golden effect. Kind of like I were gazing upon the holy grail. At least that’s how I saw it in my mind!

When I got into the office, I picked the bag up and the worst thing that could ever happen to me happened. The bag wasn’t latched shut so, as I picked it up the camera fell completely out of the bag!  It’s like by the time I knew what was going on it was too late. As soon as it came out of the bag, it’s like everything went into slow motion. I tried to throw my body under it, because the most important thing was the camera!

 See, any person who had just dropped a $4,000 dollar camera would definitely be shaken up about it. But I was EXTRA shaken up about it because my father is a photographer. So we grew up around expensive camera equipment and one thing he always said was, “If you drop this camera, it’s coming out of your a**!” And Yes, he said it just like that. So naturally, you could see why I was ready to break a limb for this camera!

 But alas, I could not get it in time and the camera smashed to the hard concrete ground and broke the lens clear off the face of the camera. You can imagine who the first person was that popped in my head after it happened! So, after I watched the camera fall and smash on the floor, I was completely frozen. I didn’t know whether to scream, cry, or faint. I was just staring at it in disbelief like:

So I picked the camera pieces up and, after several failed attempts at remounting the lens to the front of the camera, I finally walked out of the office and told someone. They went and got my boss, who was in a meeting by the way!  I could see him walking down the hall way and all I could think was “Oh no!! This camera is going to come out of my a**!” (Thanks a lot Dad!! Lol)

When my boss arrived, I was expecting him to blow up!! But he was very calm, which made me feel even more nervous! He could tell I was a bit shaken up, so he joked around with me a little bit and asked me if I was still breathing which, at that point, I don’t think I truly was! I just began apologizing, “I’m so sorry! I didn’t check to see if the bag was latched because I assumed it was! I am so sorry!” I was saying sorry so much he stopped me and said, “Calm down! I’m not worried about it! If I’m not worried about it, then you shouldn’t be! Money can fix it, we’ll send it right off to get repaired!”

As I opened my mouth to speak it’s like word vomit came up and I continued to say sorry! He was very nice about the situation and he handled it very professionally and I greatly appreciate that! He showed complete professionalism in a situation that could have easily turned nasty! So I thank him for that professionalism and for modeling how a boss should handle an AWFUL situation like this one!

The first thing I did once I got back into the car was call my Dad.  I felt obligated to call him and tell him how I did what he has told me to never do all of my life! You know how sometimes you have a reaction and want to say it, but you just have to hold it in because saying it wouldn’t help the situation? Well, my dad hasn’t quite mastered that yet! Mind you, I still felt awful and was still a little shaky!  “Ohhhhhhh myyyyyyy goodnessssss, Kiki! What were you thinking?” He uttered into the phone. I  was silent for a moment then I stuttered, “I mean…uh… Clearly I wasn’t or I wouldn’t be in this predicament, Dad!!” He laughed and continued, “Wowwwww! Bet you’ll never do that again!” I laughed with him but all I could think was “Umm.. Aren’t you supposed to be comforting me right now? You are my Dad!”

To everyone reading my post, if there is any advice I could give you it’s, Slow down! Sometimes we move so fast, that we don’t take the time to check the small things that are most important! Which, as a result, could leave you in an awful situation! The other piece of advice I would give is, with failure comes a lesson learned! Of course failure isn’t ideal, but when it happens, you learn from it! As I’m sure all of you who have read this know by now, dropping that camera was an epic fail for me! But like my boss and dad said, “I bet you’ll never do that again!”

So, the moral of the story is, always check the bag first! At least for me anyway!