{"id":48,"date":"2005-02-14T18:42:50","date_gmt":"2005-02-14T22:42:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/metasj\/terrible-horrible-no-good-very-bad-days-et-al\/"},"modified":"2007-07-14T01:04:04","modified_gmt":"2007-07-14T05:04:04","slug":"terrible-horrible-no-good-very-bad-days-et-al","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/sj\/terrible-horrible-no-good-very-bad-days-et-al\/","title":{"rendered":"Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Days (et al.)"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a><\/p>\n

I’ve been thinking a lot about the best children’s book ever. Not that one with demons and archangels and archaeopteryx <\/span>hanging out in the museum post-twilight, bathing in the fountains and gathering plastic four-leaf clovers<\/span> from the astroturf. No, I mean the one with the astonishing string of meaningless, mundane coincidences leading to a Really Bad Day<\/span>.<\/p>\n

Well, supersimultaneity has always been part of my life. I’ve mused
\nelsewhere that it is part of the universe in general, but people who I
\nmention this to often say they’ve never noticed it. In my case,
\nit has been particularly
\nstriking over the last many years, at least since a fateful, related
\nconversation with Sarah Ettling<\/span>. Perhaps that’s evidence in favor of it being a matter of perception…<\/p>\n

Often the results are so strange that I never share them with other people
\nbecause, well, why bother them with meaningless improbabilities?
\nI’m still taking flack for telling people about the disturbing smiley-face biscuit<\/span> that turned up under my hood the night my battery mysteriously died in the STAR <\/span>market parking lot.<\/p>\n

But I’m feeling more open towards the world these days, and towards humanity, and ee only humour <\/span>in those very improbabilities; perhaps you will, too.<\/p>\n

Take the other day, for instance, when I lost three contact lenses and my last pair of glasses. One of my contact lenses had been
\nbothering me, and I had left it out to soak. When I tried to put
\nmy contacts in again, it wouldn’t stay in my eye; meanwhile, as I was
\ncleaning its partner, that lens tore a bit along the edge. Its
\ntime had definitely come. I had a spare which I had only weeks ago put away its old case, but on going to take it out, found it had grown mold<\/span>… three dark spots which could be mostly (but not completely)
\nrubbed away. Now there’s<\/span> something I hope never to see again. Was that saline solution or lens solution it was in? [update: it was surely lens solution.\u00a0 and there was a class action lawsuit and a massive recall]<\/em><\/p>\n

No problem, I thought, I’ll wear glasses. I’ve had three pairs in recent memory, and two had already broken earlier this year. The third and newest pair,ultra-thin, had been lost; but turned up again in an
\nonslaught of cleaning… perfect. But after wearing
\nthem for a bit, as I took them off to lay them down, without provocation, *<\/span>tink<\/span>*<\/span>
\n— one arm sheared away and clattered softly onto my dresser, not a
\nmillimeter from the hinge. That’s metal shear on two pairs of glasses
\nin as many weeks.<\/p>\n

I must have been communicating to my belongings that I wanted to relax <\/span>with my textbooks and forget about going outside today.<\/p>\n

Then there was the day the sink and two electric razors fought with me
\nwhile I was shaving, and the front door shattered… but those are stories
\nfor another time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’ve been thinking a lot about the best children’s book ever. Not that one with demons and archangels and archaeopteryx hanging out in the museum post-twilight, bathing in the fountains and gathering plastic four-leaf clovers from the astroturf. No, I mean the one with the astonishing string of meaningless, mundane coincidences leading to a Really […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":930,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-48","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/P7iVvB-M","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/sj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/48","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/sj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/sj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/sj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/930"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/sj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=48"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/sj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/48\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/sj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=48"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}