I’m a pessimist. My wife, the optimist, makes me see the world differently | Opinion

The trouble with good days is that they are misleading. I get all dressed up in hope and decent clothes, and then what?

Mark Twain once said: “Pessimist: The optimist who didn’t arrive.” I’m a disappointed pessimist, all set to prove that this or that simply cannot be done or will go wrong, only to find I’ve been misled into negativity by logic. Logic doesn’t always know what it is talking about, and neither do I. My wife, Linda, does not depend upon objectivity. She simply makes things happen. When I try to see my doctor, for example, the medical scheduler tells me there are no appointments available until about two months after I’m sure I’ll be dead. Then, my wife gets on the phone and arranges an appointment later in the week.

When I buy the wrong thing and lose the receipt, the store tells me they won’t take the return. I am ready to slink away ready to donate their shoddy merchandise to the landfill. Linda marches in. In her case, they’ll make an exception. In our house, Linda has a tagline: “and a vacuum cleaner.” That line comes from the time she had Home Depot pick up a washer and dryer we’d had for quite some time. They were not working out, she told the manager. Of course, they gave her the full refund ... and they threw in a vacuum cleaner as a token of their appreciation for her loyalty.

Since then, her success with questionable returns has been greeted at home with, “and a vacuum cleaner!” I tend to overthink situations and make assumptions that, while not quite catastrophic, do place me on the dour, why bother, this obviously can’t happen and cannot be done team. Far too late to leave for the event. Why go, it’s going to rain. By the time we arrive, they’ll be sold out. Are you kidding, you know how long the line is going to be? Besides, we’ll never find parking. You probably don’t want to hire me, I just thought I’d stop by to confirm my assumption. What ends up bothering me the most is when I give short shift to my own potential. Actually, I’d like to brag about my ability to undersell myself — I’m downright terrific at assuming I better not get involved because, ultimately, I equate involvement with embarrassment. Failure can be ugly. From time to time, I find I’ve backed into the dangerous world of risking failure, be it cataclysmic or mere rejection by a headwaiter. I refer, of course, to moments when I find I am obligated and have no choice but to mount the necessary fortitude. Years ago, having somehow tripped and broken one of the rockers on my young daughter’s wooden rocking chair, there I was, “manufacturing” and restoring a replacement for this curved bottom on an expedited, overnight basis — dying the wood with shoe polish so it matched, and notching holes so I could glue the dowels in place. By the time she’d gotten around to seating herself on it again, Rebecca detected not a single flaw in her re-perfected rocker. Or, if she did, she’d developed a two-year-old’s refined good manners not to mention her suspicions to me. Had you asked, I would have told you it was impossible for me to pull off such sleight-of-carpentry. Ask if I could do it now. The answer is: What, are you crazy? And yet ..... That rocking chair now is sitting in my granddaughter’s room. She’s actually a bit too old for it these days. My daughter used it, her younger sister used it, my older granddaughter used it, then the younger one. Who knows? Strong construction. Worth hanging onto? Probably, the glue will crumble, the chair will start to creek and some kid will maybe get hurt or, you know, something bad might happen. I mean, logically, how long can a child’s toy rocking chair last? Charles E. Kraus is the author of “Baffled Again ... and Again.” His new collection of essays will be published in September.