It seems like ever since summer ended, everyone has been rushing around campus trying to make it to class. What happened to those summer days when we walked at a nice pace, in control of our limbs? We’ve become sloppy and we cannot manage ourselves. Our lack of sleep and increase in stress have basically turned off our motor skills.

With this serious, almost handicap situation, it’s relatively easy to spill drinks and food on ourselves. It’s like that special time which happens once a month— it’s bound to happen, but you can’t do anything about it.

Being one of those juniors who never sleeps and stresses out too much, I have many of these spillage problems. My morning coffee often finds a new home on my clothes. People tell me to stop drinking coffee, but then how would I function?

One time when I didn’t drink coffee, my shaky hands moved my ball point pen over my bright yellow skirt. The rest of the day, I walked around desperately covering the spot.

It’s embarrassing to have stains on your clothing. People who stare never point out the dark spots on your clothing, and they naturally jump to conclusions. We’re teenagers and we’re not supposed to let it out in our pants, but how can people tell the difference between a soda stain and pee?

What’s worse is that in many situations, you get home and cannot wash out the stain. For example, my pen mark is permanently a part of my skirt and the culprit was only a seemingly harmless ball point pen. I haven’t worn that skirt for months because I’m too self-conscious about that stupid blue mark.

Lately, I’ve noticed a lot of people around me spilling food on themselves. Yes, they were embarrassed too, but one of my friends had nothing to worry about. Some sandwich juice dripped onto her shorts, but she had a Tide to Go pen to get rid of the possible stain. With a few strokes of the pen, the sandwich juice was gone.

Tide to Go should remove tomato, ketchup, barbecue sauce, grape juice, coffee, tea and chocolate syrup stains. According to its website, it’s important to wipe off any excess food before going to work with the pen. The greasy food stains are harder to get out with the stain remover pen, but we don’t have greasy food at school anymore, right?

Of course, I was a bit jealous, when my friend got rid of her stain so easily. It only I had the Tide to Go pen at the time, then I wouldn’t be so embarrassed to wear my yellow skirt.

Stains are like scars, except they’re on clothing. Tide to Go is like Neosporin, except it’s for stains. They last forever as a daily reminder of that one clumsy day when you spilled or tripped. Who wants to remember those bad day?