“I went to sleep with gum in my mouth and now there’s gum in my hair and when I got out of bed this morning I tripped on the skateboard and by mistake I dropped my sweater in the sink while the water was running and I could tell it was going to be a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day.”
I was reminded of Judith Viorst’s book, “Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good Very Bad Day,” over the weekend when working on a cool art project for work. One of my colleagues had taken a big canvas and outlined the silhouette of a father reading to his little girl who was seated on his lap. They were seated in a comfy looking armchair and she wore onesie pajamas. It was the job of a small group of us to fill in the silhouette, not with paint, but with quotes from well-known children’s books. We started out with quotes printed on pages set in front of us from various Dr. Seuss books, “The Giving Tree,” “Where the Sidewalk Ends” and more. So you know, it takes A LOT of small words to fill up a big canvas! But, we accomplished our project in four hours with the help of our cell phones for research, great background music and much laughter as we took our respective trips down memory lane through the magic of the words written before us. I had no idea that I would be so grateful for that exercise and the reminder of how much that Alexander book meant to me. I remembered the black and white sketches, the Volkswagon bug that Mrs. Gibson drove for carpool, the siblings bickering, and the fact that Alexander wanted to move to Australia. Turns out I was short of inspiration today as a loving father, fan of all the kids in our community and a fixture of true kindness has passed away suddenly and way prematurely. And something moved me to pull that book off the bookshelf and give it a read. Sometimes we need more comfort than we do inspiration. And, I’m with Alexander. “It was a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day. My mom says some days are like that. Even in Australia.” In loving memory of Johnny Yee, Molly
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