Page 25 - Mousy Mouse Has a Bad Day

In the second part of the story, Mousy’s parents get a new carriage that was previously owned by someone else. The carriage is perfectly fine and most of her friends like it but then one makes a comment about it being “used.”
Mousy’s mood immediately changes from happiness to shame and embarrassment. She allows the opinion of someone else to control her mood. She never even considered if that opinion was based on Good or Stinky thinking. This is because of Mousy’s tendency to accept anything negative as truth, while positive feedback is thought of as a lie. Mousy does not accept the situation (the carriage) for what it is in reality, a nice carriage.
Instead, she takes the negative response of Helen as truth and causes herself to now see the carriage as an embarrassment and think of her father as foolish. We can assume that her behavior reflected this thinking and therefore she was sulky, unpleasant and had a VERY BAD DAY.
This type of “comparison” thinking ties in with another childhood irrationality, that of “being perfect.” Mousy sets an expectation of making 100% on the spelling test and gets terribly upset when she makes a 95%. This upset occurs even though this is the best grade she has ever made in spelling.
Everyone wants to do well in school and make 100’s on their tests. But in Mousy’s case, she is not just disappointed, she is terribly upset.
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