Anatomy of a Bad Day

What constitutes a bad day? I suppose it’s a bit different for everyone, but I also think there are some basic components involved that will reliably turn any normal day into a bad one. In an attempt to identify these components, I have studied and dissected a terrible day I had recently. So, what have I determined?

A bad day – for me anyway – seems to be made up of four individual factors that all come together at the same time. Those factors are as follows:

One: Find out that you have been the victim of a crime.

A couple weeks ago, I woke up to discover that my mailbox had been broken into and some mail was stolen. Initially, I thought this was going to be my bad day. It turns out the theft of my mail was merely the precurser to an actual bad day. A sort of bad day warmup, if you will. The crime that actually triggered my bad day came about three days later.

My wife woke me up an hour before my alarm was scheduled to go off, which was a poor start all by itself. But, she woke me up to tell me that she had received an e-mail from our credit card company advising her there was suspicious activity on our card. She was on her way out the door to go to work and did not have time to deal with the problem so she figured she should drag me out of my own blissful sleep, dump the news in my lap before I was even fully awake, and have me try to fix it. She told me to call the credit card company and clear up the mess.

After an hour on the phone, my credit cards were finally canceled, and the fraudulent charges refunded to my account. Apparently, my old credit cards were about to expire and the company had mailed me new ones. You guessed it, the mail thieves from a few days back ended up with the new cards.

This was a very solid beginning to a bad day.

Two: Have something you are looking forward to get suddenly cancelled.

Later that day, I had plans to get together with my friend, Bob, and have lunch at my favorite restaurant. We typically meet up for lunch about once or twice a month depending on our schedules and I look forward to a good meal and sometimes a cigar afterwards. Bob usually tries to convince me to go fishing with him again, and I tell him I’ll think about it, knowing full well I am never getting on a boat with him again.

On this particular day, about the time I was hanging up with the credit card company, I got a text from Bob telling me that he was cancelling our lunch date. Something else had come up, and he wasn’t going to be able to make it. My original plan of Chinese food with a friend suddenly became me, the cat, and a peanut butter sandwich.

Swing and a miss. Strike two.

Three: Shit that was working just fine yesterday is now broke.

With lunch plans down the toilet, I decided that I should at least accomplish something productive. The fields needed to be mowed again since the weeds had bounced back to twice their original height from the last time I mowed. I grabbed the tractor keys and headed outside.

I jumped on the tractor, put the key in the ignition and turned it. Nothing.

Three weeks previously, I had paid over $300 dollars to fix the tractor because it had stopped working sometime during the winter months. When the repair guy left, it was running perfectly. Now, when I was ready to use it again, it had decided to go back into hibernation. $300 dollars wasted and I had a two-ton paperweight parked in my driveway.

Frustrated, and about ready to run away from home and look for a circus to join, I went back inside the house. To calm down, I decided to get myself a drink of water. I grabbed a cup and opened the refrigerator to pour myself some cold water from the water dispenser. And … nothing.

It made a clicking and humming noise, but nothing came out.

Broken tractor. Broken refrigerator.

The only thing left to do at this point was pour myself a drink of something stronger than water, then order a cake for the pity party I was about to throw.

I grabbed up the cat (my lunch date), collapsed on the couch and started petting the animal to bring my blood pressure down. I must have looked like some sort of demented Bond character.

Four: Use the very next excuse, no matter how minor, to fly off into an uncontrolled rage.

I sat down on the couch, trying to figure out what I needed to do to get the tractor and the refrigerator fixed. I wanted to punch a hole in the wall, but I knew that would not accomplish anything except create something else broken that I needed to fix. Namely, my hand.

At that exact moment, my youngest daughter wandered into the room and saw me on the couch.

“Hey, dad,” she said to me. “The light just burned out in my bathroom. Can you put in a new lightbulb?”

It’s possible that I overreacted. I’m not sure. All I know is that my daughter locked herself in her room and the cat ran to hide under the bed.

That was my bad day.

Since then, the tractor has been repaired, the refrigerator is working again, and we have gotten our new credit cards. Everything has pretty much gone back to normal.

Well, everything except it’s still dark in my daughter’s bathroom.

And the cat is still hiding under the bed.

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