One Saturday morning in my youth, I was hanging out with my siblings, watching cartoons and trying not to wake up our mother with our general obnoxiousness. It was a pretty standard start to the weekend, until a loud BOOM was heard from the kitchen. I remember scrambling through the doorway to see my younger brother standing frozen in front of our fridge, staring wide-eyed down at the large milk puddle surrounding him. He had tried to make himself a bowl of cereal, which he'd done before, but he wasn't quite strong enough to handle a full gallon of milk, all of which was spreading quickly over the laminated floor.

As fast as the four of us could've acted to cover it up, my mom's spide-y senses were quicker. She was out of bed, down the hall, and in the kitchen before any of us could process how bad this really was.

My mom handled it like a champ and understood what my bro was trying to do, so there was very little yelling and a whole lot of moving furniture and cleaning extensively. My mom doesn't joke around with this nonsense, and within the hour, the kitchen floor was more clean than it had been in a very long while. Crisis averted, we were just out a gallon of milk, nothing more. Everything was cool. . .for the time being. Unfortunately, life is never that simple, as we found out later when milk started dripping through the ceiling of our play room (which happened to be right below the kitchen). Mother wasn't pleased, to say the least.

Now, today, the situation is pretty laughable, and my family uses it as one of the many ways to poke fun at my brother; however, it was most certainly not hilarious at the time.

This week is finals week here at ol' KU, and stresses are running a marathon through all students, myself included. I've found that problems I had previously that I thought were solved were like the milk in my kitchen floor: sitting there, just waiting to drip through and become issues again.

I'm pretty into the idea of "forgive and forget," which I believed worked well with my personality. I see myself as a reasonably empathetic person, so forgiving someone when I can see their side of the issue is standard for me. I also have a completely awful memory and have enough trouble remembering simple school assignments, so holding a grudge isn't common practice for me. When I apply "forgive and forget" to my own life, it means "I forgive you because I understand why you did what you did, and I'll forget because I don't remember much anyway, and this small transgression isn't worth using what little memory I do have." However, I don't give my memory enough credit (or I give my forgiveness too much credit, depending on how you look at it). I recall much more than I had known, which I'm quickly realizing.

Here's what I mean: Say your friend and you are grabbing some McDonald's drive-thru one night, and he/she doesn't have money on him/her. Since you're a decent person, you spot his/her meal with the stipulation that he/she needs to pay you back, which is agreed to enthusiastically. Cut to next weekend, and you two are back at the drive-thru, and your friend is still broke and still hasn't paid you back. Now, I don't know you personally, but I'm going to take a wild stab and say that you are happy to pay for your friend again, but a little grumbly that you haven't been paid back (and probably never will).

This is the feeling I've experienced a lot recently, and I honestly thought that I was just grumpy because it's finals week. That's not all there is to it, though.

Truth is, I haven't totally implemented that "forgive and forget" policy I've been advertising. Currently, I'm more implementing the "mop up the spilled milk and hope it doesn't drip through my ceiling" policy. Well, I'm looking up, milk is dropping on my forehead, and I'm not sure where to go from here.

Can someone truly "forgive and forget?" Even after taking a stroll through my deepest feelings to figure out my motivations to write this article, I'm not sure if I have the answer. However, I've heard that the first step to solving a problem is admitting there's a problem in the first place. I can't prevent people dropping gallons of milk in my life, but I can be prepared to clean it up quickly and effectively so there's no unexpected drippage that pops up later in my life.