One of Those Days...

We’ve all been there before. Some miniscule, yet annoying event (say, tearing a hole in your socks while pulling them on) tips you off that just maybe, this is going to be one of those days. Call it a premonition, or perhaps an ominous portent (to steal of phrase from John Hogdman), but you sense that this day will not go your way.

Next thing you know, you’re on the subway and next to you is a person talking loudly on the phone while two people across from you are prattling on about the tedious events of their weekend. And so it goes. People aren’t walking fast enough. Lines are too long. Your coat gets snagged on a branch. Everything is piling up. You desperately yearn to be back in your home. A place you have complete control over. Sit down, watch TV, and forget about the day.

But it doesn’t stop there. You drop your keys when you go to unlock the door. The mail falls out of the mailbox and scatters across the ground. The Internet is out and it’s too damn hot in the apartment. Sometimes you eat the bear, and sometimes the bear eats you (though I don’t know anyone who has ever eaten a bear, which doesn’t bode well for, well, any of us).

But how much of the day is really that bad? That one tiny event at the beginning of the day dictated our mindset from the outset. We were looking for the bad and annoying things. Most of the days setbacks were mild inconveniences at most and would typically be disregarded as a nothing moment. Surely there was some humor to be derived from the inane subway conversation. Bushes sometimes snag clothing, nothing to get upset about. But the mind sees what it wants. The days where things seem like they are piling on are just like any other day, we just choose to seek out the bad.

Unless, of course, you decide to reheat some pulled pork on the stovetop and as you are shifting it around to cook, some pork comes up with the spatula, falls off, and lands right in the hole in your sock. You bend over to pick the pork off of your big toe, leaving behind a BBQ saucy smear on the nail and think, “I was wrong, this really is one of those days.”