Reasons to be Happy

Sophomore year was a stressful year for my roommates and I. We had moved from Helaman Halls to a complex southwest of campus called Sherwood Arms (which is now known by a different name), and I remember a phone call from our Helaman Halls RA a couple weeks into the semester. I was the last one to talk to her, and after a few minutes of conversation she said, “You seem so upbeat, Amy!” This may have surprised me a little. I’d had a rough adjustment period when I realized just how different things were off campus, but I guess I’d come to grips with it by then and had developed a more positive attitude.

“Everyone else sounds so stressed,” she continued. “It’s a good thing you’re there to keep them sane.”

I remember that conversation so clearly because her observation about the stress level in the apartment reflected the year in general, and I’m not sure I remained the positive influence I could have been. It’s not that it was a bad year—we did a lot of fun things and I have some great memories from that particular apartment. It’s just that there seemed to be an unusual number of bumps in the path for everyone.

About the middle of winter semester, when the weather was cold and our apartment had been invaded by spiders and the stress level was at its highest, two of my roommates came up with the idea of a Happy Board. They ran it by us at roommate prayer one night, and a few days later Janet procured a large piece of white butcher paper from the Bookstore, and I brought out my case of markers and wrote at the top, “What made you HAPPY today?” with HAPPY in big, cheerful block letters. We hung the paper on a wall by our door, and stored the markers nearby.

The idea was this: Every day, no matter how horrible the day had been, something good must have happened. And so every night when we walked in the door, we were to stop and think of something to write on the happy board. The hope was that doing so would help us to focus more on the positive, something we’d been struggling to do as an apartment.

And it worked. If someone came home in a bad mood, or began complaining about classes or people or lack of time, another roommate would often ask, “Have you written on the Happy Board today?” This could have become annoying, but it didn’t. Rather, it tended to take the conversation in a new, more productive direction. And gradually the Happy Board started taking over our thoughts. Throughout the day, when good things happened, we noticed. All day I would think about what I might write on the Happy Board when I came home, and was often surprised by how many little things occurred to me.

It didn’t take long after we returned from our respective homes around the United States at the end of the following summer to decide that our new apartment needed another Happy Board. Over the next few years I became an expert at writing HAPPY in block letters, and that piece of butcher paper hanging in a prominent place in the apartment became a part of our lives. Not only did it help keep us thinking positively, but it became a great way to record our memories of each semester. Major events almost always made their way onto the board, and we could stand in front of the sheet of paper and see the making and breaking of relationships, the evolution of decisions to go on a mission or change a major, the progress of classes and callings, the planning of group dates—everything that would later define our years of experience together.

It was a great conversation piece, too. When friends came over for dinner or family home evening or group dates or just to visit, they would almost always make a stop at the Happy Board, and we encouraged them to make their own contributions. Occasionally we would have a visitor who stopped by just for the purpose of writing something on the Happy Board.

The Happy Board died a year ago. Two of my roommates got married and the third left on a mission, and the three girls from my ward who moved in to replace them were unfamiliar with the history of the Happy Board. To them, the huge piece of white butcher paper covered with colorful, handwritten words and phrases was a bit tacky, and they decided the living room would look much better if the Happy Board was replaced by Ansel Adams prints. I didn’t put up a fight. It’s not hard to induct a single newcomer into the ways of the Happy Board when it’s already well-established among the other roommates, but for one person to try to convince three new roommates that the Happy Board is a good idea is near impossible. And so I removed the last Happy Board, the one that chronicled my roommate’s engagement and my other roommate’s mission call and my decision to continue on for a PhD and the beginning of my career as a 100 Hour Board writer, and folded it neatly and filed it away in my room because I couldn’t just throw it in the trash.

I miss the Happy Board. Other people do too—we got several comments from visitors who came by and saw that the Happy Board had disappeared. My high school sister said she would continue the tradition as soon as she got up to BYU, but now that she’s here she and her roommate have yet to put a Happy Board in their dorm room, and I think the tradition has died for good. It’s sad. I still catch myself thinking, I need to write this on the Happy Board when something good happens, and have occasionally thought I ought to create some journal equivalent for myself, but it’s just not the same when it’s not out in the open for everyone to see and contribute to.

In honor of the Happy Board, then, I will finish this blog entry with:



Ten things that made me happy this week.

1. Learning to can green beans. I don't even like green beans that much (though they're the only vegetable I perfer canned to fresh), but it made me feel very domestic.

2. Lunch with my office mate and with M (a friend in our program), and with M’s husband and two children, and holding her baby, and watching Schoolhouse Rock, and cooling lemon bars on the air conditioning, and just enjoying one last get-together before we all go our separate ways at the end of the month.

3. Singin’ in the Rain at Tiblittle’s birthday party—I forgot how fun that movie is! And the cupcake decorating contest (I still liked the hummus cupcake best). And the white elephant gift exchange.

4. Going to the dentist.

5. Unexpectedly finding a way to get all my stuff out to Michigan without having to ship it.

6. Starting to pack because it turns out that in order to get my stuff out to Michigan without having to ship it, it has to be ready to go two weeks before I actually leave.

7. Finally getting my spring chorale CD.

8. A comment from my little sister on my blog. She reads faithfully, but this is the first time she’s actually written in response.

9. Hearing a snippet on NPR on how the American Music Center has commissioned works from six musicians to play when they put callers on hold. They even played some of the music. I almost want to call the American Music Center just so I can get put on hold.

10. Reading my scriptures on the porch this morning while it was still cool, and dangling my feet out over the edge, and feeling the breeze on my face and on my toes.

Overall, I'd say it’s been a good week :).