This is a little story I wrote a while ago for a white elephant gift exchange. I thought it turned out pretty well so I thought I'd share it with you guys.
You wake up in the morning just like everyone else. Your alarm rings, and you think “I should have gotten more sleep last night. That was a really poor choice I made to wait until 11 to go to bed when I knew that I had to get up early in the morning for school.” You think about it for a little bit, but decide that further thought isn’t of much use. You try to shake the tired off your eyelids as you yawn and swing your legs off of your bed.
As you adorn yourself with all sorts of colorful fabric stitched together into different shapes and garments, you think about all the stuff you’re about to fill a day with. There’s school, and then maybe you’re going to talk to some friends. You have some pretty great friends. Friends named Steve, or Clarice, or maybe even Betsy. Betsy is a good friend. You’ve known her since third grade and you two have always gotten along well.
You pour some cow milk onto your corn flakes and sit down for a heaping bowl of breakfast. Your hands shuttle portions of cereal from the bowl to their demise inside your mouth. “Don’t fret, cornflakes, your anguish is not in vain.” You think. Some might say you’re a little too sympathetic towards your cereal, but it doesn’t bother you. You’re a wonderful person. “You’re giving me energy to face a grand day; you’re a terrific little cereal.” You idly read about the cereal you’re eating on the back of the box. You see smiling people, they must be happy because they’re eating cornflakes. You think they should just be happy because they’re alive, but you finish your cornflakes and don’t have time to think about it.
You go back upstairs, to your desk. It’s a good kind of messy- the kind of messy that shows you’re too busy working on important things to keep your desk clean, but not so messy that folks think you’re an outright slob. You gather up tomes of knowledge and dump them into your backpack. You slip the straps onto your shoulders. It’s not the most comfortable arrangement, but you’re just grateful that you have a backpack full of books that are in turn full of all kinds of knowledge and facts. People always told you that knowledge is power. You just think that knowledge was knowledge, but that doesn’t keep it from being pretty wonderful.
You go to school and learn all about new things and think all sorts of new thoughts. Your English teacher is a sad old man. It seems as if he wakes up every morning and sighs out his sadness, instead of breathing in the new day. He tells your class to read three chapters in Catcher in the Rye for tomorrow and summarize them. So far you find the book deeply fascinating. It seems that Holden has a lot to complain about, but you think his life seems OK. All the kids in your class grumble at the homework that seems to accumulate without fail every day in school. You quietly write down the assignment and leave the class with everyone else.
It’s lunchtime, and you arrive a little late to the lunch line. Most folks have already gotten to the line and are waiting to buy food, but you see some friends and start talking to them. You’re talking with your friends about things you enjoy doing, like watching sports and going to the movies. You really enjoy talking to your friends, and before you know it, you’re getting your food. You don’t really like the school’s food, but you’re just glad that you get a meal every day.
After lunch is over, you go to history class. Today the teacher, a middle aged woman with plenty of gusto who really enjoys teaching her students, is teaching your class about World War 2. Some of the kids seem interested in the topic, but some of the kids just dutifully get out their spiral notebooks and dull pencils and write down some of the things the teacher says. The teacher talks about all the awful travesties committed in war with enthusiasm, but it wasn’t a strange amount of enthusiasm, just enough to show that she enjoyed her job and no more. To you, it seemed irreverent to not be sad when talking about all that death. You recall the words of Stalin, who said one death is a tragedy but a million deaths is a statistic. It was a pretty morbid saying by who you would consider to be a bad man, but it seemed to surmise your thoughts well.
School ends, and most people seem happy. You hear people talking about how the day went fast, and other people saying about how the day dragged on and on. On the way home, you ponder the duality of this statement, how a day to some can be a labored affair and for others it sails by. To you it just seems as if a day is 24 hours long. There are some things that you find confusing, but other things that you think are fairly self-explanatory. After a little while, you’re at home.
You have a glass of water. The ice you put in the water chills the water, and your hand as you hold it. It tastes good, even though water doesn’t really have a taste. You also eat some crackers, because you’re kind of hungry, but dinner isn’t for a while. The salty crackers make you thirsty, and you finish your water and put the glass in the sink. Then you take your backpack with you and go upstairs.
You once again splay the books in your backpack all over your pleasantly messy desk. You’d like to get your homework done before you relax; it always made more sense to you to get the unpleasant things in life out of way early so you didn’t have to worry about them when you were doing leisurely things. You take open the appropriate books to the relevant pages and begin learning what they had to say and writing things down in the manner various teachers suggested you do.
You work clear until dinner, and your mom calls you downstairs. Walking downstairs, you see an arrangement meticulously prepared by your mother. There are delicious meats and vegetables and all the silverware lined up like it’s supposed to be. You ask your mother what the occasion is, and she just smiles and says she was in a good mood. You and your mother and your father and your little sister sit down at the table and eat together. Your mom asks your dad about how his day was, and he says it was a hard day at the office but he got a lot done. There are a few moments of silence garnished with the sound of food being consumed, and then your father asks you how your day was. You say it was fairly typical and nice, not because you want to be dismissive of your dad, but because you can’t really think of anything interesting that happened. You share about all the things you’re learning about, about Holden Caulfield and about the Battle of the Bulge. Your parents nod with interest while chewing meat and then sipping water. You wonder how much your parents are really interested in your day, but regardless, you’re glad they asked.
After dinner, you help put the dishes into the dishwasher without being asked. Your parents thank you for your help. You pour yourself a glass of milk and take some cookies upstairs, settling into a comfortable chair and an entertaining book. You nibble on the cookies and the crumbs fall down into the creases of the book. You try to brush them out, but there comes a point where your fingers are too wide to reach the small valleys formed by the binding of book. You feel kind of bad, because this is a book you’re borrowing from the library, but not too bad.
Later in the evening, after you’ve learned all about strange fantastical lands and engaging, heroic characters in your book, you see that it’s around 9:30. This isn’t terribly late in the evening, but you figure it would be a good idea to get some more sleep after waking up so tired this morning, because you stayed out with friends last night. You say goodnight to your parents, and then to your sister, and go into your room and fold yourself into bed.
As you wait for sleep to find you and take you to a world of your subconscious, you lay still in your bed, listening to a fan you keep running back and forth to keep silence at bay. You know that some people like their room to be quiet and dark when they fall asleep, but you’ve always been bothered by little bumps and sounds far away when you’re trying to fall asleep, so you keep a fan by your bed. You think about what kind of day it’s been, and all the things you’ve done. You start to drift off to sleep with a quaint little smile on your face.
It was a pretty good day. You’re certainly not a bad person, but you don’t think too highly of yourself, and certainly don’t think of yourself explicitly as a wonderful person, but I do. I think you’re just wonderful.
