As a guide at one of the national palaces, my wife Ozge routinely takes hundreds of people on tours every day.

With her background in archeology (as a student, she worked on excavations at the site of ancient Troy), and her passion for detail, she is ideally suited for the job.

So it was perhaps no surprise when, the other day, the palace director dropped an urgent, important task in her hands. A group of trainee guides were scheduled for a tour, and the director, who normally would give the tour, had a sick mother at home who urgently needed attending. Would my Ozge kindly fill in for the training tour?

The night before, my wife hit the books – although she has worked at the palace for five years – because she wanted to brush up a bit in case a surprise question concerning the palace’s rich history came up. She stayed up well past midnight, and when I left for work the next morning, I was sure she would be more than ready.

That evening, I had to teach at a company in Gebze, which is outside of Istanbul, about an hour’s drive both ways. It’s not a lesson I look forward to – the students are OK, bright and enthusiastic – because I’m always exhausted from the commute, and because I’m lucky if I’m home by nine o’clock.

Anyway, I was in Gebze, ready to start the lesson, when my phone rang. It was my wife, Ozge.

“What time do you get home?” she asked. I told her the usual time.

“Damn,” she said. “I was hoping we could get a drink. Today was horrible, baby!”

“What do you mean?” I asked, surprised.

She explained that when the tour was ready to begin, she suddenly noticed, with horror, that her group did not consist of the university-age trainees that she had been led to expect. Rather, they were all seasoned, professionals. One of them she recognized as a guide who has given historic tours to no less than his Holiness, the Pope, as well as President Obama. (You might ask, as I did, why such accomplished guides needed such a tour? It was a kind of refresher, evidently)

“I panicked!” Ozge said. “I mean, here are all these professional guides. What am I supposed to tell them that they don’t already know?”

I was somewhat surprised, for my wife is not one normally given to panic. Her natural poise and calm are two of the things I admire most about her. And she is no stranger to guiding distinguished visitors, having given official tours to a number of visiting members of state, including one or two U.S. congressmen and their spouses.

Nevertheless, she panicked, and it was all downhill from there. Flustered, she found herself “spacing,” “getting things mixed up” during the tour. Worst of all, another guide, who was tasked with a similar group of distinguished guides, gave a reportedly splendid tour.

“Some of the guides from my group actually moved over to his tour!” my wife cried. “Oh God! At that moment, when I saw some of the people moving over to his group, I just wanted to vanish into the walls …”

At that point, I had to ring off, since my students were waiting for the lesson to start. “We’ll talk more when I get home,” I said.

“Bye!”

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My lesson went – well, OK, I guess. As a teacher, I certainly knew where my wife was coming from. She’d had a bad day (she doesn’t have many of them because as I said, she’s good at her job), and now she was suffering from an avalanche of self-doubt. It was all spinning in her head, her real and perceived mistakes, flubs, failures.

I know what that’s like. As a teacher, when things go well – the students respond to the material, and you see them reach, even surpass, the aims you’ve set – you feel over the moon. After the lesson, you play back the highlights in your head as though it were the final moments of a championship game. But when a lesson goes badly – as more often happens – then after the lesson you feel like a gross charlatan. You question whatever unthinkable folly possessed you to think you were qualified for the position of an educator. You replay all your foul-ups, your poor classroom management, your lack of proper planning, the students’ bored yawns, in a grim, desperate montage.

But the lesson that evening was, well, not bad. A bit uneven at times, but on the whole adequate. “See you next week!” the students said, one of them holding the door for me on the way out to catch the service buses.

My bad day began on the way home. First of all, it’s a busy time of year at this particular company, and for many companies, since the end of the year is approaching. A lot of the employees were working overtime. So when I got on the service bus, it was fuller than it normally is. I knew what that meant – my hopes of a speedy trip home were dashed.

The thing is, the service bus drivers take you almost to your doorstep. That’s great because you are not forced to have to transfer to the metro, then to another bus, on the way home. The downside is, because Istanbul is a vast city, and people live in different parts of town, sometimes it can take forever, winding endlessly though the city’s byzantian network of crowded backstreets.

Which is precisely what happened. First there was a traffic jam on the way back from Gebze. Then, we had to drop some people off in Kartal, and then Bostanci. Then we backtracked through that neighborhood to Goztepe, seeming to go in circles at times, getting stopped at countless intersections and red lights. The dashboard clock inched painfully past 9 o’clock, 9:15 –

I could feel the heat rising within. “Are we going to fucking Egypt then?” I cursed aloud. Fortunately, the driver doesn’t speak English. He’s actually a nice guy, a funny, talkative fellow. But he understood my tone. Come on, he’s tired too, I thought.

So I tried to relax as we continued on, dropping the last of the people off. Finally, it was just me and the driver, and we got onto the highway and headed for my neighborhood. Because of the geography, I’m always the last guy off the bus.

It was pushing half past nine when I finally walked in the door. On the way, I’d picked up a bottle of red wine – by then, I needed it as much as my wife. She was on the phone, talking with a colleague about her day.

When she finally rang off, we poured a couple of glasses of the red wine, and sat together on the balcony.

“I really sucked today,” my wife went on. “Baby, you don’t even realize –“

“I’m sure you weren’t that bad,” I said. “You’re beating yourself up. After all, your director personally appointed you for the task, and he even said that you were one of his best guides –“

“—and then I totally failed!” my wife said, burying her head in her hands. I offered her the glass of wine, and a back rub.

“Come on, it’s not like we’re doctors,” I said. “Nobody died.”

“How was your day?” Ozge asked.

“OK – until the drive home. God, I’m so sick of going to Gebze.”

Our cat, Ginger, came onto the balcony, brushing past on her way to the litter box.

“By the way, I forgot to feed her today,” Ozge said.

“You did? I didn’t feed her when I left because I thought you would.”

We looked at each other, and at Ginger. We’d both forgotten the cat!

“So while I was suffering at work,” Ozge said, “and while you were suffering on the way to Gebze,our poor Ginger was here starving to death!” As if to remonstrate, the cat brushed past us again at that moment, eyeing us both with a look of keen disappointment a queen might give to inadequate servants. These people! You have to keep after them all the time!

Shortly afterward, we went to bed, both of us tired, ready to call it a day. Ginger, having forgiven us, took up her position at the foot of the bed. Thinking about it now, I suppose of the three of us, Ginger after all had the worst of it. On a bad day, someone is always having a worse day, so it’s important to keep a sense of proportion.

Plus, we do have some holiday coming soon.

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James Tressler, a former Lost Coast resident, is a writer and teacher living in Istanbul.