Good call; Bad Call (Humorous)

By Daniel Taverne

Have you ever done anything you wish you could take back? What if life were a sporting event, and the spectators could judge your actions by indicating a vocal, “Good Call” or “Bad Call” based on the usefulness, the appropriateness and maturity of your actions? Well, I intend to help you out by distinguishing between some good calls, and some bad calls in a few familiar circumstances or places. Maybe after reading this, you’ll be able to tell a bad call before it happens and avoid unpleasantness.


One such circumstance is a job interview. Okay, let’s say you’re going to one, and you are really nervous. The morning of your interview, a good call might be to arrive at the appointed interview location at least 15 minutes early. In contrast, a bad call would be arriving 45 minutes late, then explaining your tardiness was because you couldn’t find the detonator you needed before the mail was picked up that morning.
If you arrive on time, an obvious good-call would be to sit quietly in the waiting room for your turn. A bad-call would be that pot of chili you ate the night before making sitting quietly impossible.

During the interview, when asked by the interviewer for references, a good call would be to have a list of favorable references prepared to hand over. A bad call here would be to hand the interviewer a list of famous serial killers. Another good-call here would be to quickly scan the office for personal items to brown-nose the interviewer with. For example, you could see a photo of a young girl and ask, is that your daughter?” If yes, you could say, “She’s very pretty.” A bad call, in this case, would be to spot the picture and blurt out, “Yum! Who’s the hot chick in the picture? You got her phone number?”

Once the interview is complete, a good call would include a good strong hand shake, and a warm thanks, while in this case, a bad call (prior to shaking hands) would be to wipe off the back of your hand on your pants saying, “Don’t worry. My doctor said this form of the flesh eating disease is not contagious.



Speaking of doctors, a physical examination is another situation where good and bad calls can be made. For instance, if you are a guy being checked for hernias, a good call would be to turn your head and cough; while a bad call might be saying something like, “A little to the left. Okay, down a little, a tad to the right. Okay, right there; now scratch!?” At physicals, men also have their prostates checked. Here a good call would be to bend over quietly and spread your cheeks. In this instance, a bad call would be informing the doctor that you had chili for dinner the night before…without saying a word!

Another situation I’ll highlight is army boot camp. If ever there was a place where one could make bad calls, it is here! During an inspection, a good call would be to quietly stand at attention with eyes looking straight ahead. When the drill sergeant finally gets to you, a bad call would be to inform him that his brown-round (or hat) does a terrible job accenting the chiseled features of his face. Another good call in boot camp would be to quickly enter the mess hall, quietly eat your lunch, then quickly leave. A bad call here would be to stop and ask the drill sergeant if he’d seat you in the smoking section, then tell him to hurry up and fetch your silverware!”.

Another good call in boot camp is learning how to operate an electric floor buffer, then polishing the floors to a high gloss finish. A bad call would be deciding to commit suicide with the buffer by going to the second floor of the barracks, tying the end of the buffer chord around your neck and tossing the buffer through the window. This attempt is an especially bad call if the floor buffer hits the ground before all the slack is taken out of the cord. (Don’t laugh too hard, this actually happened at Fort Gordon Georgia.

Riding in an air-liner is another situation where you should be able to distinguish between good and bad calls. Good calls happen quite often with passengers safely coming and going to the lavatory. In this instance, A bad call would be waiting too long to go utilize the lavatory after having chili for dinner the night before. Also, on an air-liner, a good call would be to sit quietly, reading a Stephen King novel, but a bad call would be to jump up every thirty minutes screaming, “We’re going down, and we’re all gonna die!”

Although it sounds helpful, this concept of having an audience saying, “Good call” or “Bad call” might not be necessary if you think before you act. Since , however, life isn’t really a sporting event, there are very few times where you will get a “do over”, so consider modifying the old carpenter’s saying, “Measure twice and cut once”, and say instead, “Think twice and do once”. If you practice this you will likely find you’ve done very few things in life that you regret.