Recently, Espinoza et al. (2014Espinoza et al. ( , 2021 reported the existence of "glitch candidates" and "anti-glitch candidates" which are effectively small spin-ups and spin-downs of a neutron star with magnitudes smaller than those seen in typical glitches. The physical origin of these small events is not yet understood. In this paper, we outline a model that can account for the changes in spin, and crucially, is independently testable with gravitational wave observations. In brief, the model posits that small spinup/spin-down events are caused by the excitation and decay of non-axisymmetric 𝑓 -modes which radiate angular momentum away in a burst-like way as gravitational waves. The model takes the change in spin frequency as an input and outputs the initial mode amplitude and the signal-to-noise ratio achievable from gravitational wave detectors. We find that the model presented here will become falsifiable once 3rd generation gravitational wave detectors, like the Einstein Telescope, begin taking data.