That pretty much sums up my day today. I hate writing negative posts like this, but at this point in the evening I just felt the need to get it off my chest. Keep reading if you don’t mind reading my complaining, or skip to the happy part with the life lesson.

It’s been a rough day.

It started out about as bad as it gets. Shenanigans from the previous evening left me unable to find my sunglasses. My brand new, one-week old, nice pair of sunglasses. They remained lost until about 3 p.m. when the restaurant I left them in called back to tell me that yes, indeed they had them. At least that was some good news.

But unfortunately it just wasn’t meant to be. When I arrived home I turned on my Xbox 360 to put an episode of 30 Rock on, only to see it give me one big “eff you” with three blinking red lights. Online support checked, tweets sent to @xboxsupport, I was then forced to conclude that it’s pretty well dead as dead gets.

I can’t say I didn’t expect it–I purchased it on launch night, November 22, 2005, and I don’t think I know anyone who had an Xbox 360 that lasted as long as mine did (they have been plagued by hardware failures). Now I’m faced with a dilemma: I can pay $99 and wait three weeks to send it to Microsoft, have them repair it, and send it back (it’s obviously not under warranty). OR, I can try to save up a little and splurge for one of the new ones, $299, which is almost certainly not going to fail again anytime soon, and includes a much larger hard drive and built in wifi. I’ll probably do the latter–I was going to buy one at some point anyway. Just hadn’t planned on it this soon.

On top of that, we were hit by a massive storm and, as fate would have it, many of our apartment windows were open, and laundry was still “drying” on the deck. Needless to say I’ve been drying floors and walls for an hour and the clothes outside are probably not going to be dry anytime soon.

The cherry on top? People. Just dealing with some frustrating things right now. But that’s more than I want to get into with this post.

But despite this terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day, I saw something on the bus today that reminded me to stay happy, regardless of the crap I have to deal with on one particularly bad day.

I wish I had a picture of him, but on the bus, I saw the most unhappy, mean, grumpy, and rude old man I have ever seen. And he muttered. Boy, did he mutter.

“I just don’t understand…” he started. It was a phrase I got to know well by the time I stepped off the bus, as he must’ve said it ten or 15 times.

“I just don’t understand why you would take the bus if you have a bike. Shouldn’t he be on the bike? Lazy kids these days.”

“Lazy kids” of course, meaning me. Me who biked ten miles through the city, had an important phone call at 8 p.m., and didn’t feel like biking up the largest hill in the city.

“I just don’t understand why they let people talk so loud on the bus,” he continued a moment later. This time he was referring to a quiet–literally, I could barely hear them–group of young Asian students talking in the back of the bus.

“I just don’t understand why this kid is practically sitting on me,” he said referring to the man standing politely in front him, standing close due to the crowded bus–ya know, because this is rush hour.

It got to the point where I almost couldn’t stand it anymore. Really, I almost freaked out. I started to turn to him and say, Hey, you know we can hear you. And it’s pretty damn rude. The woman sitting next to him muttered “be nice” a couple times under her breath, but she clearly didn’t care enough to stop the obnoxious comments from flowing.

But when I got off the bus I smiled. I smiled at every person I passed on the sidewalk on the way to my apartment building. And I smiled at the woman waiting inside our doorway, and I hugged my cat when I walked in my front door. Because yea, I had a crap day, but I’m also not that man.

I see good things in the world–despite all the bad. I try to give people the benefit of the doubt, and I try not to let my personal emotions offend other people when I’m out in public. I smile at strangers, and say Hi, how are you? even to people I’ve never met before. In my humble opinion, my way is a little better way to go.

I will never be that man. I will never succumb to that kind of hate and sadness. And I’ll never give people such dirty, mean looks as that man did to me today. Because no one deserves that, regardless of how terrible, horrible, no good, very bad my day has been.