Anatomy of a Bad Day

Today was bad. Like no toilet paper in the stall bad. It started out with a rather large piece of bad news sending me straight to the M&M’s hidden in my top drawer. Diet blown. That’s two bad things. Then the school called about missing vaccination records that they must have right now. That’s number three. I ran off to the grocery store to grab a few sale items because today is the last day for the ad. Naturally the shelves were wiped clean. I walked out with a bag of carrots—super. As I’m driving back home, still in my work clothes, my daughter spots a shaved ice shack. “Mom, can I get a shaved ice?” She trills from the backseat. I look at my watch. The boys have probably already eaten a bowl of Fruity Pebbles for their dinner so why can’t we have a shaved ice for ours? I order our desserts—after all, the day has been garbage, might as well eat garbage for dinner too. “Sorry, we’re out of that flavor,” the clerk says, referring to the shaved ice I ordered for myself. “Thanks,” I mumbled, “I guess we’ll just take the one shaved ice.” Great. I can’t even have my junk food for dinner. I drove home and ate a banana for dinner, washing it down with a Coke.


I’ve heard people say that you create your own bad days. Stub your toe when you get up in the morning and your day will spiral downward unless you make a conscious decision to change your attitude and put a positive spin on the day. But no matter how big my head may be, I have trouble believing that I’m powerful enough to cause grocery stores to run out of foodstuffs, and shaved ice shacks to run out of flavored sugar-water. Those were real. My bad or good day wouldn’t have changed that fact. I know, it’s my reaction to events that either change my day for the better or ticks me off and make me want to throw something. One question. Wouldn’t you have been unhappy to find empty store shelves? Can you seriously tell me that you would have shrugged your shoulders and not thought “that’s an hour of my life wasted that I can never get back?”

I’m an optimist, but I’m not a Pollyanna. I despise bad days, cranky people, and tailgaters. I think it’s okay to occasionally be prickly or refuse to feel better just because someone tells you that you should. Otherwise, would you really appreciate a day where the stars all align in your favor and you wonder how you, of all people, got so lucky? I doubt it, but I’d love to know what you think.