When I was 6, my family and I traveled to Cancun, Mexico, for vacation during December break. Our trip consisted of eating heaps of Mexican food, getting our hair braided, going to the beach everyday and swimming with dolphins — paradise.

This trip, however, soon took a turn — I had no idea that it was precisely at this wonderland that I would have the most embarrassing possible experience of my life.

The hotel was enormous, and the centerpiece of the main floor were three boulder-sized, heavy and artistic metal balls. Around the metal balls were individual seats where people were reading magazines, eating food and dozing off. Naturally, I was inclined to see if these metal balls were really stuck to the floor. I mean, you can’t really blame a 6-year-old for wondering, can you?

Naturally, to share my excitement, I told my family that I was going to go and push all of them to test my hypothesis, only to be greeted by their bickering in return. With their “adultishly mature” way of thinking, they were convinced that these decorations had to be glued to the ground. 

Well, little did they know.

Defiantly, I marched to the center of the hotel and pushed all three of the balls, only — for the better or worse — to find my hypothesis affirmed. The amount of force I applied was enough to send the balls rolling across the entire lobby with people chasing after what were once their seats.

Of course, my mind was not ready to react to the consequences of my own actions. So I did what any logical 6-year-old would do: turn to their family for help. To my surprise, my family had the audacity to be on the floor, dying of laughter. 

They knew what I was going to do. In short: THEY. SET. ME. UP. 

Thankfully, the decorations were safely returned to their place by the hotel employees. After going back to our room, I thought this fiasco was finally over, but my family had different ideas. Apparently, my sister decided that writing about what her “annoying little sister” had just done in her diary was extremely hilarious. It wasn’t, and I was embarrassed beyond words. 

The next day, when I went downstairs for breakfast, every hotel employee I passed glared at me. I guess they weren’t too happy that I took liberties with their centerpiece, but it was ultimately their fault — who leaves huge fixtures unsecured in the middle of a family hotel?