What to do on a bad day

February 20th, 2009 at 12:21pm Wally Haas

My day hasn’t been as bad as the one Dick Hughes, editorial page editor of the Statesman Journal in Salem, Oregon, describes below, but I’ve had a couple of rough spots, including a spillage issue of my own.

The moral of Hughes’ story is what’s important. Read the whole thing and I think you’ll find a bit of inspiration.

From Hughes:
As I write this, it’s Wednesday night and I’m watching “The Colbert Report.” Humor is good.

It’s been one of those days.

The replacement of a sprinkler head above my desk at work didn’t go well. Do you realize how many gallons of old, smelly water are in a sprinkler pipe?

With my editorial notes washed away and no dry place to host an afternoon visitor, I took him to a coffee shop, where my cup sprang its own leak, decorating my shirt.

Among the casualties of the day was my weekly column, which didn’t get written for Thursday.

Of course, Wednesday wasn’t as bad as one day in the previous century when I was teaching journalism and grammar at Oregon State University.

Driving there, I stopped in Independence for my customary big soda, and spilled it on my shirt. After finishing the class, I returned to my car to find I’d apparently put my parking money in the wrong slot, and thus had earned myself a ticket.

Driving back to the Statesman Journal, I was ruefully reflecting on the day. That’s when the state trooper pulled me over for speeding. (Hey, I’ve had two speeding tickets in 40 years of driving. Not bad.) It’s on days such as this that I think of Heather.

She was a trombonist, and singer, in a high school jazz band that I saw at a festival a while back.

Heather was moving to the front of the band for her solo when she knocked over the microphone. Then her music went off the stand.

She leaned down to pick her music off the floor. That’s when the slide shot off her trombone, lodging under the risers.

Meantime, she’d missed the entrance for her solo. The band played on.
What would happen? the audience wondered (and probably her bandmates too).

Heather retrieved the slide, put the trombone back together, raised the horn to her lips and started playing … in exactly the right place.

Heather’s my hero. She exemplified composure and focus, and I’d hire her in a second.

We all mess up. We all have bad days. We all make mistakes. No matter how smart and talented we are, we all sometimes do dumb stuff.

What matters is how well we recover and carry on.

We need to have a sense of humor about ourselves, especially in these stressful times.

We’re all one coffee cup away from a giant shirt stain.

Dick Hughes, whose then-toddler child once accidentally pantsed him at the South Salem McDonald’s, is the editorial page editor of the Statesman Journal. His column usually appears on Thursdays. Contact him at dhughes@StatesmanJournal.com; P.O. Box 13009, Salem, OR 97309; or (503) 399-6727.

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