My Perfect Day

In the moments before the alarm goes off when years of waking up at the same time have trained me, I feel the dread in a half asleep haze, knowing what is to come. That god awful beep beep beep and the hiddeous red numbers ordering me to get up before I'm fully refreshed to face the day. "Why do I have to get up first?" I say to myself in the final seconds of a dream. I open my eyes before the alarm goes off and snuggle the pillow around my ears knowing what is coming. Nothing happens. I lay there waiting for the dreaded beeping that is effective because of it's irritating quality. Not one irritating sound. Just the distant chirping of a cricket. I look at the alarm clock and stare at it for a while trying to understand the numbers when it hits me. "It's seven forty five! I'm an hour late!"

I jump out of bed and throw on the bath robe my husband bought for me a couple of birthdays ago. Not a terribly romantic gift, but rather the kind of gift one gets after years of marriage have created a very comfortable relationship. Once a relationship gets very comfortable you tend to get eachother comfortable type gifts. Nice, yet comfortable. But there is nothing comfortable about this morning. I am walking through the house like my mother did when I was a kid and had done something wrong. Storming. That is what we called it. "She's storming through the house". It is not running nor is it walking. It is an intense pace that says "this is serious".

I storm past the living room and the dining room straight to the kitchen before the smell hits me. Bacon, I smell bacon. Lenny must have gotten up earlier and cooked him some breakfast. "Linda, sit down and let me finish." He meets me at the kitchen door and prohibits me from going in. He takes me by the arm and leads me to the table and pulls a chair out for me. "Every thing ok?" I ask as he whisks away into the kitchen. I know what is coming. Just like when you get the electric bill on red paper. You don't have to open it, you know it is not good news. In the time it takes me to imagine the mess I will have to clean up after this act of kindness he comes out with a serving plate and places it on the table.

There is one place setting with a juice, milk and coffee. I must admit, I like this treatment. He puts a fresh belgian waffle and some bacon on my plate with a small mound of scrambled eggs. Even the syrup is heated. Where did he learn to do all this? He leans over and kisses me like he did nine years ago. "Have a good day hon. I'll see you tonite." And then he left. I sat there with my mouth open for a moment and discided to not look a gift horse in the mouth. So I eat. Man, this is better than my cooking.

After I eat I call in to work to let them know I'll be late. Bill, my boss, answers and tells me to go ahead and take the whole day off. This is a little out of the ordinary but a day off with pay? I'll take it. I could use an easy day. What do you do with a free day? I mean I don't usually do this so I don't really know what to do. I slowly step into the kitchen thinking about how much time it is going to take to clean up after Lenny who has cooked for me a few times. I think it is sweet, how he tries to lighten the load by cooking dinner for me. But usualy he makes such a mess that I end up working two or three times harder just cleaning up after.

Wow. Just wow. The kitchen is not just clean. It is spotless. All the dishes are put away and if there had been any spills they were wiped up. I stand there looking around for a few minutes before it hits me. I don't have to do anything in here. I can leave this room in peace. Wow.

The next stop for me is to go through the ritual of attacking the mess also known as my hair. I have far too long ignored the shape my hair has taken. It is just easier to pull it back than to actually deal with it. The side effects of looking to the needs of everything and everyone else is the tendency to put my own needs on the back burner. When I get to the bathroom and look in the mirror I completly forget about the hair.

Every woman knows her own face. Every line, the tint and yes the sags. So when there is a change we know it. In fact, it is that knowledge that is the basis for many arguments. Men rarely notice the subtle changes that have us in a moment of hopeful joy.

The reflection I saw was thinner. I had never been real fat, but over nine years of marraige I have relaxed a bit. Say around thirty pounds of relaxed bits. Sligtly puffy cheaks a little "pouch" of a belly. I got on one of those large number scales I bought a few years back to help with a weight loss program I stuck with for three whole months. One hundred twenty five. How can that be? I have weighed one hundred forty pounds for quite a while now. In fact I weighed one forty just yesterday. I picked up the scale and shook it and then got back on. One hundred twenty five. This is shaping up to be a great day.

Now I am ready to dance. My clothes don't fit right. I haven't needed a belt for quite some time so I never got one. As I walk my jeans kind of slip down. And all my blouses are what my mother would call "frumpy". It is time to go shopping.

My what a lovely day. The air is fresh like in the spring time and just the right temperature for driving with the windows down. A kind of care free day with no traffic to speak of. Then I get a chill like something is wrong and I know what it is. I look in the rear view mirror to confirm that there is a cop behind me. No lights on but he is there. I look at the speedometer and I am going fifteen miles per hour over the limit. Crap. No lights yet but I know they are coming. Lenny says that drastically changing the way you drive when you see a cop is a sure way to get noticed. So I stay at fifty(it is a thirty five zone).

I keep looking in the mirror to see if his lights come on, but they don't. At this point I couldn't figure out why he is not pulling me over. I am becoming consumed with the possiblities. Maybe he is not a real cop or under orders to not pull me over for some unknown reason. Now I am mostly watching the cop and glancing at the road.

Then I feel something and I know immediatly what. Everything is in slow motion as I see the face of a kid hit the windshield and blood splashes everywhere. At that same moment I stomp on the brakes and skid off the road. I jump out of the car and run back to see find the kid, but in my panic I can't find him. How could I be so obsessed with my situation that I could forget about the rest of the world?

The officer pulls over and asks me if I were ok. I am weeping and trying to speek but even I can't make any sense of what I am saying. "Are you ok miss?" "Do you need some assistance?" Do I need assistance? What about the kid? I thought. I told tho officer that I did not see the kid and that he came out of nowhere. "You mean that kid on the skateboard?" he asks. The kid was gliding down the road on his skateboard without a scratch on him. The officer said "he just saw me stop very quickly and needed to see if I was ok." "I guess I am" I told him and he left.

I was still shaking when I got back in the car and just sat there for a few minutes. I don't really remember know what happened. I got out again and looked the car over, but there was no damage. Not to the bumper the hood or the windshield. How could I have imagined this? I felt the car hit the kid. The shock came through the steering wheel. I saw his face and the blood. And then I saw him skating off. Weird.

The store is less than a block away from the place I stopped so after about twenty minutes of shaking and crying, I cleaned my face up and went on. I no longer felt like shopping but I kind of went there anyway. I think it is like being on auto pilot, hoping to recapture the feeling that I had just an hour earlier. But I never did. I felt like a dark cloud had completly encompassed me and I had no idea how to escape.

The store is pleasent enough but this time I notice how few people there are to actually help customers. Just a bunch of kids in there late teens to early twentys bunched together visiting, laughing but paying no attention to the customers(me). This bothers me more than usual. I've been to this store many times and there is nothing new going on. Maybe it is the car incident or just having overslept this morning but this ignoring me is bothering me a lot.

I have been in this stupid store for an hour and not even a "Welcome" or "Thank you for shopping with us", just a bunch of dumb kids, standing around like it was a club house for their enjoyment. "What do I have to do to get some help" I thought. I even picked up a blouse and said loudly "I would buy this if I could just get some help." One of the kids looked wver at me and then went on talking and giggling with his buddies. They all had employee badges on so it wasn't just school kids playing hooky.

I knock over a maniquin but no one noticed. I should leave and go to another store but now I'm on a mission. I'm going to get somebodies attention here. I go to the hardware section and pick up an axe. I took it to the womens fashion. I pick out a maniquin in a highly visable area and with what sounded like a battle cry chopped one of the arms off. Then I bury it in the abdomen, and still no one noticed.

Now I am chopping on that maniquin like a lumberjack works on a log. I am now in a full blown rage. Some one tapped me on my shoulder. I don't know why. But it made me jump. I turned and burried the axe in her forehead. The woman fell to the floor motionless, blood flowing from her wound. Her eyes fixed, unmoving. She is dead. The horror of the moment hits me and I fall to my knees.

Suddenly I am surrounded by people. Shrieks of terror come from the crowd, and two guys pin me to the ground and yell "somebody call 911". Out of the corner of my eye I see a woman with a cell phone and it starts beeping. Beep beep beep beep.

I sit up suddenly in my bed, confused. I look at the beeping alarm and those ugly red numbers say it's 6am. I can hear rain outside. I lay back down and Lenny asks "Waz fer brefists?" A cloud of awful morning breath invades my nose and I feel grateful. I reach over and hit the snooze bar and sleep for ten more minutes thankful for the challenges of the coming day and for the events that make up my life.

The End