By 
This morning I got an extra large coffee at Dunkin Donuts. In perhaps a supernatural reminder from BWo to wake up earlier and make coffee at home, a tragedy occurred: not three steps outside of The DD, I dropped the coffee and spilled it everywhere. A very pretty girl just getting out of her car witnessed the event and comforted me by saying “That sucks.” Yes, attractive lady, that does suck. What I committed was an example of one of the most humiliating events that can befall a person: the adult spill.
Up until a certain age, human beings are allowed to spill something every now and then and be forgiven almost instantly. “It’s not your fault that you spilled, Baby Barry. You’re too young to have successfully put that drink to your mouth.” Even until age 18, a spill can be seen as nothing more than an unfortunate circumstance. After you’re legally allowed to buy lottery tickets, however, people are expected to possess a certain degree of coordination in order to prevent the spilling of anything. An adult spill, whether at a restaurant, at the apartment, or near the corner of Irving Park and Broadway, is nothing short of shameful.
I'm a grown man who spilled coffee, and I couldn't even find a picture with decent resolution to illustrate it. How embarrassing.
Thankfully, my adult spill this morning pales in comparison to some other adult spills throughout history. Here are some of the worst offenders.
1. The McDonald’s adult spill. The famous one.
On February 27th, 1992, 79-year-old Albuquerquean Stella Liebeck ordered a coffee through a McDonald’s drive-through. While attempting to add cream and sugar, Liebeck adult-spilled all over her lap, causing third-degree burns on 6% of her body and resulting in a highly-publicized lawsuit. She ended up receiving a $640,000 settlement, but this was at the cost of being remembered by the world as an adult-spiller.
An adult spill court case. How embarrassing.
2. The Great Beer Spill.
Ever spilled your beer on your end table and felt like a fool? How about 2,184 cases? That’s how much Grolsch beer was crammed into a truck in May 2005 when another driver got in its way on Highway 401. I can not imagine the shame of your truck rolling over and spilling (and destroying) tens of thousands of bottles of beer in a single instant, but this guy can!
So much moderately upscale beer wasted. How embarrassing.
3. When adult spills destroy everything.
In 1989, The Exxon Valdez left Valdez, Alaska for Long Beach, California. Apparently nobody told Captain Joseph Hazelwood that reefs and boat hulls don’t make good friends. Almost 11 million gallons of oil were adult-spilled into Prince William Sound, and Alaska was ruined forever.
Above: The absolute last way I'd want to make the cover of Time. How embarrassing.
4. Don’t spill bees. For the love of God, don’t spill bees.
If I was a truck driver, I would make sure to drive extra carefully when carrying precious cargo. Especially when that cargo is OVER 13 MILLION BEES. In 2007 a trailer hauling more than 450 beehives ran itself off of the road in Wyoming and freed the army of bees from captivity. Thankfully only a few thousand bees were adult-spilled out of the truck, but in my a few thousand bees is a few thousand bees too many.
This could have doomed us all to a life of bee slavery. How embeerrassing.
