Did you ever have one of those days?

In the last few years I can honestly say that I have had few days that I would say were perfect from start to finish. I don't count vacation days because first, I haven't been on many, and second, those aren't real life days.

I remember having to take night school classes in high school to make up for a semester spent daydreaming in my Freshman English class. (Confession time: I had a huge crush on Stephanie Kozlowski, our resident Goth. I never told anyone about that, but she and I sat by each other in English class and she was the sweetest girl I knew.) Anyway, in this night school class I was often given really simple busy-work assignments. One such assignment was writing a description of our perfect day.

I recall going to great detail about starting the day at sunrise with a killer breakfast, spending the bulk of the day on an Oregon beach just staring out into the ocean under an overcast sky, and then enjoying the company of friends in the evening. (As I said, I went into great detail in the assignment, so I'm not going to here.)

Looking back I think I was lying to myself when I wrote that. My perfect day as a high school kid probably involved me sitting in my buddy's basement playing guitar, stopping to get food from the Bell, then coming back and playing a game of half-court basketball in his back yard. And in the interest of full disclosure, the perfect day also would have involved copious amounts of make outs with whichever girl I was currently infatuated.

The truth is, aside from the involvement of any girls, that was exactly what every day of high school was, and I loved it.

Today was a terrible day. Nothing went as I planned and work was one disappointment after another. It's days like this that make me think about that dream day on the beach, or days jamming with the band in the basement, or being aroused and confused by the way Stephanie's overdone eye makeup really made her bright blue eyes pop against her painted white skin.

But then I think back and realize that those carefree days were surely peppered with bad ones, the worst ones ever, even.

I guess the point here is that time marches on, and our wonderfully erratic brains have a great way of giving us selective amnesia. I am still coming down from my rage high today and I know that in as little as a week I probably won't remember what happened. But years from now I'll look back at this period and surely only remember the days spent playing in the park with the kids. The quick weekend getaways that we poor people call vacations will seem, in my memory, to be as big as a destination cruise.

The actual perfect days are happening all the time. The truth is you can't plan for them. So let them come and risk having a few bad ones. In a few days you won't remember anyway.