My bad days tend to be a thing of legend.

I'm not sure exactly when (or how) this started, but they are the type of bad that if I was watching them play out on a movie screen, I'd have called bullshit and left the theater.

Last Thursday was one of those days. I woke up late for work because I spent the night drinking with Deanne. In my defense, she had come from Iowa and I see her maybe once a year, so it's totally acceptable for us to be drinking hard liquor at 3 PM on a Wednesday night. Anyway, I digress.

I rolled out of bed and magically made it to the train station on time. And that's when I realized that there wasn't a single car in the lot. Once I got over the initial Oh-My-God-Its-Already-The-Weekend-And-I-Slept-Through-Work-For-Days panic, the conductor told me that there was a freight train derailment and huge fire. There would be no train service for days.

Fantastic.

Anyone who lives in Chicago can tell you that getting there from the suburbs isn't always the easiest thing, and even the tiniest disruption in a commute can leave you hours late in getting to your destination. After wandering the suburbs for about an hour, I managed to find a different train. Ten miles away. Ridiculous.

Wednesday was an interesting evening for me. I got on the train from work and I had my Blackberry. I know this because I distinctly remember thinking "I shouldn't put that there, I'm going to lose that stupid thing". So you can imagine my utter shock when I got home...with no Blackberry.

Fuck.

I figure this is the best opportunity to see if someone turned it into the lost and found, so after waiting 10 minutes in line, some lady finally waved me up to the window.


The conversation we had went something like this:
Lady At The Window: Can I help you?
Me: Yes, I was wondering if someone turned in a Blackberry.
Lady At The Window: What kind of Blackberry.
Me: I'm not sure...it's a little older, company issue...it's easy to identify as it's most likely gone off 9000 times since you got it.
Lady At The Window: Where did you lose it?
Me: On the (Train I take, redacted to prevent stalking) outbound at 1:40.
Lady At The Window: Which car were you sitting in?
Me: The second car from the front.
Lady At The Window: Are you sure?
Me: I'm positive.
Lady At The Window: You'll have to go to window 10, that's the lost and found. He's at lunch.
Me: Wait...I have to talk to someone else?
Lady At The Window: Yes.
Me: So all that so you can tell me that I have to talk to someone else.
Lady At The Window: He's at lunch.
Me: It's 9:50 in the morning.
Lady At The Window: Window 10.


I feel like I deserve some sort of an award at this point for not breaking through the glass in the window an strangling her with my bare hands. As I was leaving the station, a very large black man came up to me.The first words out of his mouth were, and I quote, "Hey baby girl, can you help me get to Wacker Drive".

Having tried to navigate Chicago, I can feel this guy's pain. Unfortunately, I am no help at this point and I'm not having a real great day. I give him a polite "I'm sorry, I don't know."

This is where it gets weird.

Next thing I know, he's got his hand on my shoulder and he's thanking me for stopping. "God bless you, no one else has even hesitated". Then? Then he extends his hand, and before I know what's happening, I'm doing some weird ass handshake I didn't know that I knew. And I'm not talking a fist bump, either. I'm talking there were thumbs locking and fingers wiggling and I'm not entirely sure but I think I might have accidentally joined a gang on my way to work.

After I stopped to get a bandanna, wifebeater and a switchblade, I finally made my way out of the train station, where it started pouring.

Then my mom calls. It's never good when someone starts the conversation with "No one is hurt...but..." In this case? The "but" was "our mechanic took the car for a joyride and wrapped the car around a pole. It's totaled, we can't afford a new one and Jesus knows those inbred hillbilly assholes don't have insurance".

It was just one of those days.

Now if you'll excuse me, I need to go shave off my eyebrows and have them tattooed back on in an attempt to blend more seamlessly into my new lifestyle, yo.