So You Had A Bad Day

Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day

We all can relate to a bad day. What is the equivalent of this book for an adult?

The Odyssey? Not really. But definitely a bad day.
Herakles had a bad day. Let's not forget the act touching off all those labors, even if Hera did trick him into killing his family raging with anger. So did the guy in Death of a Salesman but what adult book do you go to to be able to chant back to the day with some sass about it, name it, and re-enact it in a kind of cathartic drama where you proclaim it to a group of on-looking peers or family or readers as you sort of shout it all out. Let you say...I feel lousy. And announce you are moving to Australia to get away. Top this one book in adult reading because I need it.
Just what do you do, go journal it? That hardly matches as big enough. Or a blog, I can tell you from experience a void of response isn't filling that need, and it sounds narcissistic. And then you have to write it down? What can you do, read, movies? Try reading this children's book again. It really isn't Twitter...but it is a vehicle. Art, you know...the domain of feeling.

I've been teaching a long time and let me tell you, bad days are very real.
In school even under NCLB rigid controls and all they do, bad days happen all too often. How is that possible? The mandate gives you the pacing. That should wipe out your humanity or needs, shouldn't it? Assign you what to feel. Then validate you when you do it "right." Maybe the teacher isn't working hard enough, or planning long enough. That's what prevents these situations and feelings surely. Hum.
And they are valid bad days too. How unbelievable this can't be automatized away. With enough tests and forms turned into controlled proscribed situations where the focus is re-directed into the learning goals. We all know the power that holds when you feel your life slipping away cause you just got evicted.


Oh yeah, the country is in some bad times/days right now. Lines are blurring. They told us they knew everything at the training, but this bleeds into the room some days. Feeling low. I recall that because structures were set up here to validate and allow people to do very mean things to anyone that disagreed or shared a different point of view about "change" or the efficacy of the program using the behavioral control strategies placed into an environment, unwilling to see the poverty and the issues at hand for what they are. What? No matter, I'm silent now.
Well, you remember the days long past when you were treated professionally.
When you raised a hand and did not have to write your question on a small notepad sticky thing and put it on a poster in the back of the room called the "parking lot" and wait for another time that isn't coming when your question can be addressed so you, you a person, won't interrupt the group? Anyone in another time and place would view that as rude in the extreme, now you are rude for thinking of a way to express a question. No way is that ok. walls might tumble. You recall times that passed before these times of silence in the face of UNBELIEVABLE TRUTHS unspoken. Talk about the Sounds of Silence.
Oh...let's play that...look at text.


What was unusual once when we were allowed kid's literature was a writer came along, Viorst, and let ideas like this be in her books. It was actually at the time rather shocking and refreshing to see something like a big, bad day ( over a wolf or holiday or sanitized stuff ) make it into a book as the driver of a story in the way this worked. Rather like Seize the Day for kids you know?

So Alexander gets to hold the day for the class or the reader to "just look at it." Have you ever noticed that seeing another kid's boo-boo at 6 is one of the most status producing, meaningful things? Kids will run across a totally behaviorally managed room to see a cut. Wonder why? Voirst gets that.

I'm careful, reading this one comes out after the day has really announced itself as a true bomb. A day that isn't going to be ok really fast, one where at the best we are stopping some crying, not necessarily the day the hamster dies. More the day when someone moves unexpectedly, another child pukes but no one can pick them up and the office sends them back, the "inspectors" caught you off the "mandate," the sink stops up, two kids got head bumps at recess....you get the idea.... you can make a LIST. And then after reading this book you can turn your bad day into a class or personal writing project. So and so's very bad awful (add some other word's you call adjectives) bad day. Then at another time you can teach opposites and make a very good day version.

This book allows you to be derivative in a way that starts children writing. I appreciate the pattern she used here, adding nightmare after nightmare then recounting the one before it. Say the whole list each additional problem, normally this drives me nuts, but for 6 year olds it grasps something interesting to them. Repetition. And it kind of yells too.Provides a way to manage something. Make a list. Shout it out. Tell it. Repeat it. Speak your truth. (Of course I think that requires a common humanity and others compassion but I'm not teaching that I guess. I like to think we might. ) It's actually what drives 99% of adults-repetition compulsions- but adults like to think it ain't so....opps, off topic.

So Alexander came along to give us a way to address this idea of a day just spinning OUT of YOUR control. As it spins into disaster and you need to fully address it."I'm not happy here." Good work. I can't think of anything comparable. For a gift to someone in certain situations, this can be perfect. It just depends.

I had a really bad day Friday.
I might read this book and tell my class on Monday. I might not. It depends. No adult there will hear it. My son came home from high school, after a wrestling tumbling drill for two hours. This is how they sent him to me...he lost the sight in one eye, he lost feeling in one arm, he had a sudden onset of crushing head pain at home so severe he could not speak, he got dizzy, he threw up. Waiting by himself in a 50 degree parking lot I found him with no coat and no adult. Why should they notice? He had a concussion less than a month ago ( same thing then, nothing noticed, done at the wrestling though the blow knocked him senseless so he had no logical speech) and wrestling practice gave him to me like this then too, beyond out of it, but Friday was the worst yet. I picked up my broken boy.
Rushed to ER. Bad word comes to mind.
He had tests, a spinal tap. AND.........We still don't know. We have some theories of possibilities we are not telling him until we see.
SOME VERY BAD STUFF CANNOT BE RULED OUT.
But an MRI is next. The ER could not do it at night or weekend apparently. Great.

No sports for a year now ordered, but not ordered last concussion with his doctor, thanks that made this worse. Now he gets restrictions.
Well no friggin kidding he can't see in one eye on the opposite side of the head blowI guess not.
And he gets a neurologist, ( they will let us schedule it ourselves) as we wait til Monday. It was such a bad day I am actually playing that had a Bad Day song in my head over and over and over....yeah I had a terrible day one of the worst of life (maybe it's the commercial invading my head though, as we sit and watch him and run the TV) the commercial on TV right now that won't go away and I'm seriously thinking of reading this book to him (though he outgrew it a few years ago)
He had a very bad, serious, and irreconcilably bad day. With a powerlessness that his adult, me, could only put the car in gear and get to an ER to stay til 4 AM. And feel as we did as kids ourselves-at the mercy of something unknown. Both of us out of control and at the mercy of something with the potential to strip me of my son. There aren't too many ways to reconcile it.

It has to be shared to hold.I just did.

Get the book. Kids need it sometimes. I need something.
Australia looks fine. I want to run somewhere. To someone.

My son on a recent hike.