Having a Bad Day?

There's a list of stunningly bad similes floating around our English Department. One of them descibes a man falling from a building and "hitting the pavement like a Hefty bag filled with vegetable soup." Now there's a bit of imagery for you.

This simile is the first thing I thought of when a friend of mine emailed me an amazing story about a repairman who fell sixty feet from a cell tower. The doctors and nurses thought they'd never be able to "put the peas back in the pea soup," if I may. Yet, after many surgeries, steel rods in his back, and months and months of intensive therapy, he pulled through. When asked about his amazing recovery, he responded, "I knew I could choose to live or choose to die. I chose to live. I approach every day that way: I can choose to have a good day or choose to have a bad day. I find it's always best to opt for the positive."

You have to admit, though, no one would fault the guy if he was a little less than cheerful after a fall like that. (I get weepy just thinking about chipping my pedicure or passing gas in public. If I did both at the same time, I'd likely be hospitalized and on oxygen.)

Yet, cheerful he was! When he was rushed into the ER, doctors and nurses were huddled around him. One asked whether he was allergic to anything. His raspy response?? "Gravity."

Okay, if Hefty Humpty can crack jokes in the midst of crisis, you'd think it would be a no-brainer for us ALL to see the positive in our lives and choose to have a good day, right? After all, when we choose to have a bad day or to look at things in a negative light, it is really only ourselves who suffer. Right? Right?

All of this brings me to the subject of seasonal blues. About this time every year, I get all fidgetty and grumpy and tend to see more negative and less positive. There's something of a let down immediately following January 1st and the months of Chicago's cold darkness that follows. The snow and cold --which were magical during the holidays-- now just seem like dirty slush through which we must wade. Warm sunshine? It's a distant memory. And don't even get me started on the January and February credit card bills. Oy.

You know these feelings?

Then, you know how you tell yourself how you should count your blessings, things could be worse, you're lucky you aren't a nose-diving Hefty bag full of minestrone, blah, blah, blah?

Still, seeing the positive is easier said than done. It may help to hear about an ACTUAL BAD DAY. It's always better to have some sort of specific contrast, right? Thus, I offer for you a DAY YOU ARE GLAD IS NOT YOURS. This may help you to see how lucky you are...even when the temperature is hovering in the teens and you haven't seen sunlight in weeks.

Actual Bad Day: (You might want to grab a tissue...and your favorite hair product.) A foreign exchange student visiting our school from Spain (picture Fez from That 70's Show) was in America for exactly one day. He took a morning shower in his host family's bathroom, probably excited to meet students from a new country. He grabs the shampoo and lathers up. Virtually everything in America is written in English and Spanish. Everything except Nair. The poor kid depilatoried his head. He said he thought the "shampoo" smelled unusual, but he just chalked it up to a new American scent. His hair melted to his scalp. Want to know how to fix a head of long, thick, black hair Naired into a frizzled pouf? You can't. You have to shave it all off. The poor kid wanted to fly back home to Spain but, after thinking about parading his sudden baldness in front of strangers in a foreign land or in front of his friends back home, he opted to spend the next six weeks wearing a ski hat amongst strangers and completing his foreign exchange.

I know, I know...I am petting my hair and crying, too.... But doesn't your day seem better??