An Occasion | Alexandra WInder

During the spring semester of 2006, I was taking Utah State University’s Distance Ed Extension classes in Blanding, Utah. The classes are held in the College of Eastern Utah-San Juan Campus technology building. In the large foyer of the tech building there is a huge oak table with chairs all around it. This was my favorite spot to go and work on my homework before I had class. One beautiful, warm spring day I was sitting there and a lady I knew walked in the door. She walked down the hall and into the USU classrooms. I didn’t really think anything of it then, but when she walked by a few minutes later I paid more attention to her. She was fumbling around in her rather large purse looking for, what I assumed, were her keys. Just before she reached out to open the door, I heard her sigh heavily, and then say, “This just isn’t my day.”

There’s only been few times in my life when I really take a trip on thoughts but, for some reason, her comment really intrigued me. And since the choice was between studying for sociology and thinking the incident through, I chose to spend a few minutes in contemplation.
What does it take to make it “my day” for someone? Is it a good grade? Good luck? Does it involve the word good? Does everything have to go perfectly in order for it to be a good day? Do only a few bad things make the day not yours? Where does that put Mondays? Does waking up on the weekday directly after a weekend make it a bad day? What if Monday came in the middle of the week (or would a rose by any other name still smell as sweet?)
These kinds of thoughts kept infiltrating my frazzled brain. I couldn’t sort anything out, and I sure wasn’t making sense to myself.

I couldn’t really come to a conclusion, except that as human beings, if something goes wrong we tend to blame it on the day. We think to ourselves, or say aloud, “This isn’t my day, so nothing will go right!” Perhaps we don’t want to take credit for bad things that happen to us, so we’re more prone to put the blame on something else. Of course this theory doesn’t make sense when reversed. We do like to take credit for good days, don’t we? The point bothered me, and yet it just didn’t make sense. Since when did people start assigning days? How many other humans on this planet aren’t having a good day? How about those that are having good days? Is it an accumulation of little annoyances that create a bad day, or can it be just one big disaster?

One of my favorite books is Daddy-Long-Legs by Jean Webster. Her heroine, Miss Jerusha Abbott, wrote to the trustee who is paying for her to attend college. “It isn’t the big troubles in life that require character,” she penned, “Anybody can rise to a crisis and face a crushing tragedy with courage, but to meet the petty hazards of the day with a laugh – I really think that requires spirit!” I love this idea. How many of us can make it through some catastrophe and then say, “That just wasn’t my day?” But how many of us can say, “This hasn’t been the best day for me, but it can still be good, because I’m not one to let a few things get me down!”

To quote Meg Ryan’s character in You’ve Got Mail – “I don’t really want an answer; I just want to send this cosmic question out into the void.” And that’s how it is; I don’t think that I really want an answer. Perhaps it is enough, knowing that in each of us lays the power to change. Instead of sighing and sadly saying, “This isn’t my day”, we should bravely toss the little things into the wind and walk away laughing, just boldly enough to make Miss Jerusha Abbott proud.