Victim Or Victor—It's Your ChoiceSample

A Bad Day      

      A man was working on his motorcycle on the patio of his house and his wife was nearby in the kitchen. While racing the engine, the motorcycle accidentally slipped into gear and the man, still holding onto the handlebars, was dragged along as it burst through the glass patio doors. His wife, hearing the crash, ran into the room to find her husband cut and bleeding, the motorcycle and the shattered patio door, and she called for an ambulance. Because the house sat at a fairly large hill, she went down several flights of stairs to meet the paramedics and escort them to her husband. While the attendants were loading her husband, the wife managed to right the motorcycle and push it outside. She also blotted up the spilled gasoline with some paper towels and threw them in the toilet.

    After being treated and released the man returned home. He looked at his motorcycle and the shattered doors and he went to the bathroom. To console himself he lit up a cigarette while he was attending to his business. As he was about to stand he flipped the cigarette butt between his legs. The wife, who was in the kitchen, heard a loud explosion and her husband screaming. She found him lying on the bathroom floor with his trousers blown away and burns on his buttocks, legs and groin.

    She once again phoned for an ambulance.

    The same paramedic crew was dispatched and, as the paramedics carried the man down the stairs to the ambulance, they asked the wife what happened. She told them and they started laughing so hard that one of them slipped and lost his grip on the stretcher, dumping the husband out, so he fell down the remaining stairs and broke his arm.

    Was that man having a bad day or what?

    And the only reason you’re laughing is because it wasn't you, right? I mean, have you ever had a bad day? Yes, everyone has. And sometimes it’s not just a bad day, it’s a bad year or a bad season. Everybody goes through bad times. Everybody has times when life gets hard. But the problem is when our bad times, our times of difficulty, actually get into our head. When we let this happen, we have a negative attitude or what some might call a Victim Mentality. It is our choice to go that route.