100 bad days makes 100 good stories…

Today, I dumped a venti iced vanilla latte all over the floor of my classroom.

You read that right. ALLL over the floor. Thank GOD it was linoleum tile.

My immediate reaction? “Crap!!” I locked eyes with the professor & he immediately stifled his laughter. I attempted to get up, locked in my seat by the desk across my lap, & nearly spilt all of my technology into the mess of caffeine.

The girl next to me grabbed my laptop & clicker before moving her things to the other end of the classroom. For a moment or two, I couldn’t move. People share stories about dreams where they walk in front of class in their underwear or forget about a huge project due that day. I never imagined that spilling coffee would be so incredibly embarrassing.

Not to mention, food & drinks were not allowed in the classroom; at least, not according to the sign I passed as I fled the auditorium in search of paper towels.

Three of my fellow front-row friends were sweet enough to stay behind & help me clean up the mess, thank the Lord. I managed to hold back my frustration until the teacher dismissed me, kindly stating that I had cleaned the mess more than anyone else would have attempted to, & telling me that he could finish from there. I disposed of the last of the paper towels in my hands & threw away the reusable, now completely useless (utterly destroyed) Starbucks tumbler before practically sprinting out the side door.

In the courtyard, I finally stopped. Turning back to face the door (& away from the rest of society), I completely lost it.

This has got to be the most embarrassing thing that has happened to me, ever, I repeated over & over in my head. Did you see his face? He must think I’m a complete clutz! A moron! Why, oh why, did I ever bring coffee into this auditorium in the first place?

I had thought that I was being careful. I put the coffee at my feet at first, before deciding that it was more precariously placed there than it would be on my desk. I had made it until the last .2 seconds of class like this, feeling rather confident in myself for having gotten through the class without an incident related to the latte.

Only when the professor had said, “Next class, we will be talking about evolution,” & made direct eye contact with me, did I reach for something just out of reach & upset the drink. Why, oh why, did that have to happen right then?

You’re so incredibly DUMB, I repeated to myself. You couldn’t even get out of your desk to fix the problem. You tripped on the stairs on the way to the bathroom. You broke the cup that you had just bought two weeks ago. You’re a complete failure. Just look at this chaos!

As the voices continued to repeat this, I marveled at the wonder that I had decided to forgo mascara today. At least one thing had worked out in my favor. I could cry all that I wanted to & nobody had to know.

Unfortunately, my next class was in less than 6 minutes. I lowered my eyes to the sidewalk & prayed that I wouldn’t run into anyone I knew. You can be upset with yourself later, I told the voices. We can carry on with this at literally ANY other time. Chill.

When I got to Chemistry, I sat on top of the chair instead of in the chair. Nice going, LOL, the voice added. I focused on breathing & held back the waterworks.

I’m not a dramatic person, I should add.

It was just a lot.

Suddenly, my entire day was RUINED. I mean it. Everything I did, everything I said was entirely wrong. Whether it was an answer to a Chemistry question or giving advice to a friend, I was consistently incorrect. I couldn’t help but be amazed with all of the wrongness that had entered my life at once. It felt as though I had been cursed.

Which was funny, because less than 4 hours before, my day had been amazing.

I texted a few friends & told them about my spilled coffee. It had cost me $5. That’s more than I would usually pay for coffee, on average. Plus, I had lost a $2 Starbucks tumbler in the process of my terrible-no good-very bad day. Nothing that I did would be good enough for me today. I already knew it.

So, I bit the bullet & bought another coffee. I decided to try a new place on campus, deciding that I might as well do something new in order to make myself feel better.

Standing in line, I blared music so loudly that I received perturbed looks from the people around me. To be honest, their odd looks only added to my suspicion that I had become cursed overnight & my awful day was going to continue.

At the front of the line, the lady asked for my order. I did my best to be pleasant, but in all honesty, I was sad. I don’t think it was hard to tell. I reordered my drink from this morning.

How is your day going, she asked. I’m used to coffee shop small talk. “Good,” you say. But today, the day was not good. I had cried, & I’m not used to crying. Ever.

And, for some reason, she seemed to be genuinely curious. I must have sounded awful sad.

I paused. In all honesty, I told her, I’m just hoping this coffee makes my day better.

That’s a lot of hope to put in a cup of coffee. She stopped pumping vanilla syrup into the cup & smiled, as if what I had said was hilarious.

Coffee isn’t good enough to do that, she responded. Espresso, that’s your key. It was small. It was faint. But the joke was there. The motivation behind her sweet attempt at a joke, trying to make me feel better, was like balm on chapped lips. Suddenly, smiling was a little easier.

My day did not drastically improve after that moment. In fact, I’m still feeling pretty crappy.

BUT… for almost every bad day, there comes a fantastic story a few weeks later, when the embarrassment has died down. So I decided to tell the world, in a round-a-bout form of encouragement. Hopefully your day is going better than mine did, but if it’s not, think about the look on my face when the coffee cup hit the floor. Eyes as big as… well, coffee cups. Trust me when I say that I looked hilarious!

But, if that’s not enough, I have put together a list of things that I have planned for the future, if I need to cheer myself up after another crap day. Enjoy! 😉

1. Coffee. Getting hyper is usually enough to solve mundane sadness. (But please, drink enough water to compensate because dehydration is NO JOKE)
2. Take a nap. Waking up tends to put things into perspective.
3. PRAY ABOUT IT. God tends to solve our problems in mysterious ways, but praying first will help you remember that He’s got your back.
4. Clean/work out/do something small but productive. It’ll remind you that you CAN actually do this. You’re not a failure; you had a bad day.
5. Find a friend to inspire you. Look on Pinterest for inspirational quotes. Inspiration & motivation are the key to getting back up again. I promise 😉

On that note, any other tips to add?? Leave them down in the comments! (;