When Otero resident Ashbel Spalding declared on Thursday that it had been “the worst day of [his] life,” his friends and classmates were skeptical, to say the least. “It really was a pretty bad day,” explained his roommate Stephen Marvy. Spalding’s day included a burst bike tire, a worse-than-expected grade on his PWR presentation, and an embarrassing incident involving toilet paper in front of Spalding’s current crush. To make matter worse, Spalding learned, on the same day, that the cruise his family had planned on taking would have to be postponed. These are all, indisputably, mildly unpleasant events. “But, well, the worst? Really?” Insisted roommate Marvy. “If that’s your worst day, you must have a pretty good life.” And in fact, Spalding does have a damn good life. A scientifically rigorous double blind study was performed that compiled data gleaned from diary entries, old photo albums, and school security camera tapes, ultimately confirming that Thursday, April 25 truly was the worst day in Ashbel Spalding’s very privileged life. “We looked into it,” wrote chief researcher Roxy Holmes, “and that really was it. The worst day in his life. There have been no dead pets or grandparents, not even chicken pox!” Holmes’ team thought they had found evidence to the contrary when they discovered that four years earlier Spalding’s family had moved to reduce his father’s commute to work, requiring him to switch schools, a move that Ashbel had not supported. Doing something he did not want to do had been difficult indeed for Ashbel, and that may very well be the second worst day in his life, but, “when everything is considered,” Holmes insisted, “last Thursday still comes out on top. Especially when you consider that at his new school, Ashbel received his first handjob, making the ordeal, in retrospect, appear in a much more positive light.” Holmes added, “It seems unlikely that any of Thursday’s events will lead to a handjob.” Once the study was published, Spalding’s classmates apologized profusely for doubting him, and he has graciously agreed to put the whole incident behind him, noting optimistically that after last week’s darkness, things can only get better.
