You know those days when nothing seems to go right � you keep misdialing on the last digit of every phone you call you make, you don�t feel right in your clothes, you keep forgetting deadlines, and you can�t remember the simplest things (like how to spell the word �when�)?

And then, out of nowhere, something happens � you�re witness to a random act of kindness, you find someone even less comfortable in heels than you, you meet someone who has just been fired, or you see a dirty child clinging to the leg of a homeless beggar.

And suddenly, and immediately, you realize that things aren�t as bad as they seem.

I�m reading a new book called The Frog King, by first-time novelist, Adam Davies. I read a chapter at lunch recounting a time when the main character, Harry, volunteered at the children�s ward of the hospital, Beth Israel. Whether it�s true or not (I suppose I should KNOW it�s not true, seeing as the book is fiction), it broke my heart, stopped me in my tracks, and made my life seem pretty damn good.

�Last winter when I was feeling especially bad about myself and my transgressions I volunteered in the children�s hematology/oncology department at Beth Israel. I was the story-hour guy. I would push around this little cart full of children�s books and read to the kids in their beds when they were going to sleep. I took it seriously. I always scanned the books before I read them to make sure they didn�t have any mention of death in them � you�d be surprised how many children�s books have death in them.

�I met Birdie when she came in with her mother and her little brother, Max (�Short for Maximum,� she told me). They were homeless, the whole family, and the mother had a moderate case of schizophrenia. One day, in a fit of paranoia, she attacked Max with the cutter-strip on a box of Saran Wrap and sliced him up pretty bad. When they brought him in to the hospital the nurse discovered a lump on his head that turned out to be a very aggressive tumor. It was so aggressive, in fact, that within a month he�d had four surgeries. His shaved head, swollen and covered with the raised seams of sutures, look like a beaten softball.

�The surgeries couldn�t stop the tumor, though. It grew so big that it started pressing on the optic nerve and made Max blind. One day the mom holds up this crayon to Max and says, �What color is this, Max?� Of course the kid couldn�t see a thing, but he didn�t want to let his mom down so he guessed.

�Blue?�

�Nooo,� the mom chided. �Try again.�

�Green?�

�Nooo. You know what color this is, Max.� The mother�s breath when she spoke smelled like ammonia.

�Yellow?�

�Concentrate, Max,� she said, getting angry. Max looked like he would start crying any second. He was sucking his lower lip in and out like mad.

�Red?�

�Max, you�re disappointing Mommy. Mommy wants you to concentrate. You know the word for this color.� She was talking in this real eerie, quiet, furious voice. Max was crying now, but you could barely tell. He was trying to hold it in. He was trying to guess the right color. It was the most heartbreaking thing I have ever seen. The kid is BLIND, I wanted to say. Leave him alone. You�re torturing him, you nut. Your son is going to die in a matter of weeks so you can stop being crazy for at least that little amount of time, can�t you?

�But all I managed to say was, �Please.� Just like that. I kept saying it, sort of in a whisper, hoping she would stop. �Please,� I said. �Please, please, please.�

�Next month, Max died and I quit. The job wasn�t helping me appreciably. It was unpaid, of course, so it didn�t help me out financially, either.

�It just made me feel worse about everything.

�So the day when I�d come in with a book I had bought for Max myself � it was a pop-up book in which I had pasted scratch-n�-sniff stickers on the pop-ups so he could interact with the book a little � and discovered that his bed was empty, the sheets neat and orderly and smelling of death, I quit. I just turned around and walked out without talking to anybody. And I haven�t been back to Beth Israel since.�

Now if THAT doesn�t make almost anyone feel that things aren�t quite as bad as they seem, I don�t know what will.

Excuse me now, while I go have a good cry for fictitious Maximum.