Comedy Of Errors

Okay, so this morning I couldn't for the life of me remember if my morning meeting was at 7:30 or 7:45. Just to play it safe, I got to work at 7:25. Then I waited 20 minutes for the 7:45 meeting to start. Sigh.

Two hours later, I clumsily knocked a bottle of water over onto a friend's laptop. (Fortunately, he had the lid securely screwed on. Whew.)

When I went to leave for lunch, it seemed that my keyless entry's battery had died, because my car door wouldn't open and I had to use the actual key. Interestingly, the interior lock switch didn't work either. Nor did the key when I turned it in the ignition. Turned out I'd left my lights on and my battery was dead.

After work, I went to buy groceries. As I braved the pre-Thanksgiving crowds in the frozen food aisle, I grabbed three Healthy Choice dinners out of the freezer. Unfortunately, the middle one slipped out from between the other two, resulting in all three of them clattering to the floor. I let out an embsrassed chuckle and picked them up, feeling terribly self-conscious.

Carrying the groceries in from my apartment's parking lot, one of my bags slipped of of the pinky I had it precariously looped around. Of course, the bag's contents happened to include a jar of spaghetti sauce, which - upon hitting the concrete of my front porch - exploded inside the bag, the broken glass slicing plenty of holes out from which the sauce could pour. The patio looked like a CSI murder scene.

Of course, the evening wouldn't have been complete without the rinsing of spaghetti sauce off soup cans resulting in shards of glass jamming up the garbage disposal.

Certainly, there have been times in my life where a series of events like this would have resulted in an outburst of anger or a sullen "my day is ruined" attitude. But like The Sphinx said in "Mystery Men," "Until you learn to master your rage, your rage will become your master."



Actually, he didn't say that, exactly. He'd been spouting predictable twists of phrase all day, so the conversation with Mr. Furious went more like this:

Mr. Furious: Okay, am I the onIy one who finds these sayings a littIe bit formulaic? "If you wanna push something down, you have to pull it up." "If you wanna go left, you have to go right..."

The Sphinx: Your temper is very quick, my friend. But untli you Iearn to master your rage...

Mr. Furious: "...Your rage will become your master?" That's what you were gonna say, right? Right?

The Sphinx: Not necessarliy.

What a great movie.

Anyway, the point is that while circumstances are often uncontrollable, your response to those things is always your choice. As Stephen R. Covey wrote, "Our behavior is a function of our decisions, not our conditions. We can subordinate feelings to values."

So, clumsy day. Ha ha, no big deal. It gave me something to write about.
And hey, if I don't write before Thanksgiving, have a great one. Enjoy your family and/or friends, and remember to thank God for them. Seriously.