You Can't Afford a Bad Day!

May 18, 2026

21

               Every year at this time, I think about the high school seniors who are about to embark on a world unlike any they’ve seen before.

               I always seem to have a hundred tips I want to offer. Here's one:

              Listen, ladies and gentlemen! – You can’t afford a bad day!

               It’s not allowed. Absolutely … Positively ... Unquestionably … Not an option …

Oh, and one more word: Impossible.

               A paradox? No doubt, but true: We are not allowed a bad day, and that’s impossible!

               Because bad days slip up on you like that mean junkyard dog lurking behind a tree when you walk by its house. But, even with the dog, you know to keep a keen eye out for it the next time we walk by.

               Avoiding a bad day requires 137 different things, just to start: You need to surround yourself with the most positive people. You need to read the most encouraging material. You need to listen to the most calming music. You need to pray the best prayers, with little or no intermission.

One of the reasons I haven’t talked politics or such in our columns is that you get plenty of that every time you turn around, and you need to open up the paper sometimes and only see the good news. Good news tends to help you have a better day than bad news. Profound, right?

Several years ago, I sent out an email to my Red Oak High School teachers inviting them to join in on my weekly front-porch writings. Many good teachers wrote back to us quickly, saying, “Add me on.”

Then I received this desperate message.

“Coach," the teacher wrote, "please put me on your e-mail list. I had a TERRIBLE day yesterday!” The caps hers, not mine.

Written from the ledge!

She was a junior high teacher. That tells us all we need to know.

I don’t know what happened “yesterday.” My imagination ran wild, but the possibilities are endless, and the list would make Gone With The Wind look like nothing but a comic strip, just not quite as funny.

I quickly assembled my mailing list and wrote this little column you have in your hand: “You can’t afford a bad day!”

I knew then, and I know now that you don’t have to be a junior high teacher to have a bad day.

We all have bad days, and—chances are—you’re having a little bit of one right now. If you are, stop it! Stop it right now! Close the door, turn off the news, slip out the back door, breathe deeply, say a big prayer, grab a Snickers. Make a U-turn right in the middle of the road and turn it around!

I’ll show you why:

One day near the twilight of my first teaching career, I was having a bad day. I had earned it, and I was enjoying it to the fullest! I took my bad, bad, bad day to the hallway between classes and was standing at my classroom door, when one of my sweet young students walked up to me with a friend, and she dropped a bombshell:

“Coach,” she said, “this is my friend Mary Ann. Mary Ann’s been having a really bad day, so I wanted her to meet you. I knew that if she met you, you’d help her feel better.”

Talk about throwing a wrench into my bad day!

Listen! Even though I am sure I had earned it, was entitled to it, had my name engraved on it, there was one little-bitty caveat I failed to take into consideration.

I really, really can NOT afford a bad day.

My newfound friend Mary Ann taught me that, the hard way.