Losing your sparkle

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You can be the happiest person in the world and still have a bad day. You can make a conscious effort to be positive and have good vibes and all that nice stuff, but some days you just ain’t feelin’ it. Everybody has them, some of us more than others, but there’s nothing wrong with having an off day once in a while. Just keep in mind that while you’re having your off day, someone else is having their off day, too. This greatly increases your chances of crossing bad-day streams and creating a shitstorm supernova, so beware the bad-day blues.

After being out for a couple of weeks straight, I begin to lose my sparkle. I know it’s unfathomable, but I can actually be a complete pain in the ass when I want to be. I am generally a happy, easygoing person, but when I have my off days I’m awful. I make myself sick. Thankfully, these days are few and far between, and George is patient and afraid of doing life in prison enough to put up with me.

Three weeks out we finally started heading toward home. You all know how this goes; you finally get going that way and everything goes to crap. A simple three-day trip across Texas with a drop and hook in the middle ends up being a five-day ordeal waiting in some Godforsaken wasteland in the middle of nowhere for freight to show up from Mexico. You just want to go home and every minute you sit in that hot, hellish desert and wait seems like an eternity. (Have you gotten your violins out yet?)

We had been sitting in the Love’s parking lot for a day. I was sick of smelling Subway and my sparkle was nonexistent. We were shuffling around inside, getting yet another cup of coffee. I was looking at the magazine rack for the 40th time when this drunk chick barged into the store talking really loud on her cellphone and being generally annoying. I immediately hated her. My sparkle had become so fragile the drunk chick broke it. I did something I try really hard not to do and let her ruin my day by causing me to think ill thoughts of others. George either sensed this, or saw me staring at her like a snake about to bite the crap out of something.

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“You OK, babe? Did she say something to you?”

“Well, I’m not sure if she was talking to me, but she did broadcast to the entire store that Miranda is a bitch. That was right before she tripped and smashed a bag of Doritos, which I notice she isn’t buying. Some people suck the life out of humanity, one bag of Doritos at a time.”

“Oh come on, she’s just drunk. Don’t pay attention to her.”

“I wasn’t paying attention to her. She forced herself upon me like a filthy plague when she barged into the store screaming into her phone. Then she smashed a bag of Doritos and left them for someone else to buy, like some kind of food heathen. If I had bought that bag of Doritos, I’d snatch a damn knot in her head for making me eat Dorito crumbs.”

“I don’t think you need any more coffee.”

“Poke her another eye hole.”

“Let’s go for a walk.”

“Slap the smirk right off her Dorito-smashing face….”

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