Just One of Those Days

Mommy went off to work quite happily, that just-one-of-those-days day when she was staying with friends in Virginia and working on a short-term consult in the middle of Washington DC. She trotted down to the bus stop for the short hop to the metro station. Happy day! Blue skies shining over me...well, you know. She thought that everything was going to be just hunky-dory. The sun was up, the skies were clear, and all was well with the world.

However, Mommy's bus did not come. She had to wait a long while for the next bus.

Then, she came to the metro station and took the train to her regular stop, Dupont Circle South, the metro station that had the second longest escalator in the entire city — and the up escalator was out of order. Mommy had to walk up a lot of stairs.

Mommy made it to work all right, although late, and she got a lot of work done, working all day on one special project on the computer. She was very pleased. At the end of the day, however, when she went to store the document, she pushed a very wrong button and lost everything that she had done. The network administrator said that there was no way to retrieve it and that it was very unusual for something like this to happen. Mommy was no longer pleased.

She then left for home. This time the down escalator at the metro station was not working, and she had to walk down a lot of stairs.

By then, Mommy was very tired. That must have been why she did not notice that the train had passed her stop. Oops! She got out at the next stop, figuring that she could walk across the platform and take the train one stop back. Unfortunately, that particular station was being repaired. To get to the other side, Mommy had to take two different sets of stairs. Well, she only had to take one, but the first set she chose was closed at the top, and there was no note at the bottom to tell her that. She finally made it to the other side just as the train pulled out of the station. She had to wait another half-hour for the next train.

Finally, Mommy got back to the previous station, made the right transfer, and reached the metro station where she needed to catch the bus home. However, the last bus had by then already left. She asked one of the other bus drivers if he went near the intersection she needed. He said yes, but it turned out that "near" was a half-mile away. So, she had to walk a half-mile back to that intersection in the dark through a bad part of town, then another half-mile up a hill to get back home.

By then Mommy was beginning to have some doubts about her sunny day. All doubts disappeared, however, when near the intersection, the blue sky turned black and the clouds burst. A raging thunderstorm started.

Mommy had not brought an umbrella, but she always carries a spare rain poncho. She pulled it out of her backpack and put it on. The water from the poncho, however, dripped onto her high heels as she walked up the hill where her friends lived. What more could go wrong, she wondered? She should not have asked. About a block from the house, one of her shoes fell apart.

Mommy took off her shoes and walked in her stocking feet the last block. That put a hole in her stocking. Mommy did not care about the hole, though. She just wanted to get inside the warm house. She could see that people were in the back; the lights were on and so was the sound. At last! A warm, pleasant end to a not-so-sunny day and black, not blue, skies.

Mommy reached for her key, but she did not have it. She rang the bell, but no one heard. So, she had to traipse through the side garden -- more sock holes -- and knock on the back window.

When she got inside, Mommy took off her wet clothes. Sitting in dry pajamas and warm slippers, she wrote me and Daddy and my siblings a note. It was just one of those days, she told us. Yikes! I hope there are not more of those days coming!

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This story is adapted and shortened from a collection of vignettes that I helped Doah to write and publish several years ago (copyright 2003). It was my attempt to help him understand literacy and the purpose of writing and reading. The book was featured, one of thousands of other books of course, at the National Book Exhibit in Los Angeles that year, and Doah proudly walked up to the check-in counter for his author badge. "I author," he announced, and he really acted like one at the booksigning. Sometimes that boy can really surprise me!