No matter how bad or how stupid any situation gets, I need to be able to think of the counter balance. The thing that, in comparison, pales my travails.
Depending on the size of my discomfort, I can fill in the blank with the appropriately horrible event from any time in history. It gives me a lot to work with, and I find that being morbid doesn't bother me at all.
For instance:
"Damn, traffic sucks, and I'm gonna be late for work and get the stink eye from my manager." (I used to refer to him as my "boss" until I realized that ain't nobody the boss of me.)
It could be worse: "We could be in the wreck that caused the traffic, be dead, and not make it to work at all."
Sometimes, I'm quite virtuous in my rationalizations:
"Oh shit, I left my purse on top of the car and it didn't fall off until I hit 65 on the highway. Too bad I took that 300 dollars out of the ATM in case the electric grid died at the stroke of the new millennium."
It could be worse: "I could be one of the homeless people living under the bridge that will find that cash, and it will be like magic at their darkest moment and change their lives forever."
Other times, I have to reach really, really deep, which generally leads to some really, really ugly stuff.:
"Oh hell no, I did not just break both my feet while on vacation!!"
It could be worse: "I could be living in Cambodia, farming a rice paddie, too poor to even dream of a vacation, step on a land mine, get both my feet blown off, and have no access to prosthetics."
Which reminds me, I love me some foreign country, third world, kind of comparisons:
"WTF, who turned the lights out? Is it getting colder in here? Hey, I thought they didn't cut that shit off in the middle of February anymore."
It could be worse: "If we lived in Siberia, we'd always be cold, and have icicles running down our moustaches like in that movie Dr. Zhivago, and have nothing to eat but nasty shit like left over rotten produce we found in the garbage."
" No, the bank did not just charge me a big fat service charge for the favor of bouncing my mortgage payment because I was 79 cents short?"
It could be worse: "Well, I guess we could be starving to death in Ethiopia."
I find the middle east especially helpful when it comes to women's issue's:
"I'm just as smart as any man I've ever met. So why does he earn so much more money for doing the same job?"
It could be worse: "If I lived in the middle east, they would stone me to death in the courtyard."
My mothers personal favorite is Germany, because it covers so much ground:
You can fill in the blank on this one, no matter the how small or large the hardship.
It could be worse: "We could be living in Nazi Germany, poo-poo-poo."
"Mom, does he have to do the entire service in Hebrew, and hasn't he been talking for like 12,000 hours now? I can't feel my legs anymore."
It could be worse: "Be quiet, you could be in a concentration camp."
In closing, I'd like to share with you my current favorite, which is just plain stupid:
"Oh crap, I'm the same age as Susan Boyle!"
It could be worse: "Well, at least I'm not a virgin."
Go ahead, try me. Tell me anything and I'll tell you how it could be worse. So there you have it.
