Growing up, my parents would constantly say they were, "making the best of a bad situation."  They always said it laughingly, with a hillbilly accent (it must have came from a line in a movie or a comedy show). "Situation" sounded more like "sitchy-a-shun." I began to hate the phrase. Why were we getting in to so many "bad situations" in the first place?

When my parents were newly married, my mom fell in love with an over-priced little dinette set, but they didn't have much money and couldn't justify buying it.

When Christmas rolled around, my dad decided to surprise her with it. He went out and bought it and strapped it onto his car. On the way home it broke loose, blew off the car and broke into a hundred pieces. He pulled over, picked up all the pieces and put them in his trunk.

When he got home he asked my mom to come outside to see what he'd gotten her for Christmas. She looked into the trunk full of sticks and asked him what it was.

"Kindling," he answered. I can just hear his big laugh.

My mom's response after hearing what it had been? "Oh well."

She could have said something like, "You'd think, being an engineer and all, that you might have figured out a way to strap it down so it wouldn't blow off."

But no, that wasn't her way and it certainly wasn't his. It was just the beginning of hundreds of times they'd be "making the best of a bad situation."