A Day

Rachael tends to wake up at 7am on weekdays. Some days it’s for Young Adult Literature, and on others it’s for a fiction writing class. One class asks her to read books geared toward the enigmatic “young adult”, while the other asks her to read stories written by college students who stumble their way through trying to sound “adult” so that they’re no longer confined by the “young” modifier. Occasionally Rachael raises an eyebrow at the inclusion of certain four letter words in otherwise G rated stories. She half-suspects, however, that maybe she’s the one who has it all wrong between the “young” and “adult” and “young adult.” She would think back to her time as an adolescent, but she’s not entirely sure that that time ever ended.

Understanding her as an adolescent could explain a lot of things—her moments of arrogance, pride, carelessness, and lapse of punctuality—if only she hadn’t found out that adults, too, fall victim to such vices and perhaps far more often than with teenagers. Her professors and classmates habitually show up late to class, angry men on the television speak with conviction but refuse to listen even politely, her apartment’s on-site manager can’t refund her dollar from when the washer broke because she lost the key to its cashbox, it goes on. Maybe Rachael really needed those four quarters to run the load of laundry she dearly wanted to do, maybe she takes deep breaths to ensure that she is respectful of others while they share their opposing views, and maybe Rachael ran in her jeans and Converse to make it to class on time.

But the day goes on. After the early morning class, Rachael bikes home, eats lunch, wastes time on the internet, and then, if she has pulled together a behemoth-like strength of will, she will do some homework. Twice a week, she has a 2PM class where she’s constantly faced with the question of what “nonfiction” is. She’s still not sure, but every day she has a different idea, and every day she thinks about something new. She goes to practice at 3PM.

At practice, Rachael runs around. With as much “practice” as she’s done, you’d think she’d be really good, but it doesn’t quite work that way. She knows she can go so far and so fast, but the truth is that any running without injury is good. In reality, she’s only better than every injured person out there. She and her teammates, more often than not, don’t even think about running while they’re on the trails, because when something is good, we don’t usually think about it.

Then there’s dinner, which should come as quickly after practice as possible. Then homework, because she probably didn’t do it while she was researching the upcoming superhero movies. To finish her day, Rachael might drink some sleepy-time tea, though she doesn’t need it, and she’ll nestle into her bed sheets printed with sleeping cows. After she checks to see that her alarm is correct, but before sleep has come to reset her day, she’ll cling to her stuffed dog and whisper to it “goodnight.”