You know it’s going to be one of those days when your morning begins hosing down dried cat puke from the front walk.
Nothing sets the tone for the day quite like that.
Even worse: The only reason I noticed was I spied the dog dragging her tongue across it like it was some kind of feline-flavored popsicle.
“Are you kidding me!?!” I shouted at the dog. “How many times do I have to tell you NOT to eat cat vomit … especially if it’s neon orange?”
How many times, you ask? You’d be surprised … and we don’t even have a cat.
But that’s how it all began. That’s what got the day rolling, and as I took the dog down the street for her walk, I just knew I was in store for a doozy. That it could only get worse. That the universe had me in its sights. (Several times I glanced up at the sky to make sure a meteor wasn’t screaming toward me.)
How is it we know when we’re going to have a bad day? It’s like it’s instinctive — that we have some sixth sense that can sniff one out or there’s some warning that it’s coming. Maybe it’s the universe’s way of saying, “Dude, I’m just telling you right now to go back inside, crawl into bed and just wait it out until the fur stops flying.”
We can foresee bad days coming, yet we’re powerless to stop them. Most of us get sick days, but this is why I would like a new class of days to take off — bad days. These you would use when you get that initial warning sign — dog eating cat puke, coffee spilled on tie, flat tire, dead squirrel clutching satanic symbol on the hood of your car. You know, the usual indicators that your day is doomed. If you think about it, we always know they’re coming, and we should be able to call in cursed.
“No, I’m afraid I won’t be in at all. A bat who was foaming at the mouth just crashed into my head, so I’m going to wait it out in the safe-room under the stairs until tomorrow.”
I wasn’t wrong about my day. I had student problems, Web site problems, student-Web site problems, I didn’t get to eat lunch until 3:30 and then I got sick that evening. Overall the day came as advertised — a good 8 ½ on the crap-o-meter — and I was glad to put it to bed that evening.
Did I know that morning what was in store for me? I had an inkling — I remember saying to myself on the walk, “Today would be a good day to buy chain-mail and a life preserver.” But I figured if I knew it was coming, I could just dig in my heels and lower my shoulder. Bad idea — it bowled me over like a freight train.
Maybe I set the day in motion by how I reacted to the cat vomit. My wife likes to say that if you put out positive energy, the universe will give you back positive energy. And of course, her thinking goes, the same is true with negative energy. You get back what you give off.
I get it, and to some extent it makes sense. It’s kind of like the old saying about life giving you lemons and you making lemonade. But life didn’t give me lemons — it gave me cat puke! And it’s awful hard to get yourself in a positive frame of mind while you’re spraying it off the concrete and watching your dog gleefully lick the remnants off her lips.
Still, maybe there’s some truth to it. If we see ourselves under the proverbial dark cloud, then that’s all we’re going to see. Probably I should have laughed in the face of adversity — dusted it off my shoulder like dandruff. I should have told the universe who was boss and that it couldn’t throw a bad day at me … even with neon-orange cat throw up on my front walk.