Okay, guys, Anxiety Management Pop Quiz Challenge.

Tomorrow… Okay, that’s asking too much.  Pick a day next week. A sudden change in your personality could lead friends and relatives to the wrong conclusion. You know…bring up that troublesome branch of the family…and how you do look just like Aunt Franny…you know, when you get that look in your eyes…

So, we’re talking about change here, but no sudden moves.

First, think about your typical day…from the moment you open your eyes until you close them again.  Now, find an event, person, wardrobe, phone user, disaster, profession, religion, publication, television show, politician, political viewpoint….that when you encounter “it” you just can’t stop yourself from making a negative comment.

I tried this, and I didn’t make it out of bed.  I didn’t even make it to a sitting position before my tiny brain was awash in negative thoughts the world really needed to hear.

You see, my special person was watching ESPN “Around the Horn”…with no sound of course, because he wouldn’t want to disturb me. (At least, I like to think that is the reason, though I strongly suspect he mistakenly thinks that with the sound off, it’s possible I won’t start his day off with an arrogant remark about the ESPN, Tiger Woods and his trumped up “disease,” Lance Armstrong and how he made a big deal out of saving his sperm so that he and his wife who saw him through cancer could have children later…then left her and the kids for Cheryl Crow, or how the NBA is such a height-elitist sport, or how if the overweight, over fiftyish man delivering the sports was a woman, she wouldn’t have a job, how I don’t get soccer, how boxing shouldn’t be a sport, how it doesn’t make sense that young boys are supposed to consider sports figures as role models…and the Olympics, what’s that about?  A kid spends seventeen hours a day ice-skating and I’m supposed to proclaim her a national hero?    

Or, there’s the more personal route, in which I take a dig at my special person’s character by pointing out that ESPN just repeats the same stories over and over (This from a woman with an addiction to true crime shows, Reno 911, and, yes, there was the embarrassing streak of Nancy Grace back before Casey Anthony went to jail…)…To accomplish the more personal complaint, I turn to him and say, “You’re not buying this, are you?” with the thinly veiled implication that, if he is enjoying the show, he’s clearly mentally defective.

Okay.  You pick your little sore spot.  And challenge yourself to…just for one day…keep your (clever) but negative remarks to yourself.

Oh, sure. Laugh. It’s not that easy.