Another Normal Day

Another Normal Day ©

By Michael Casey

I was wondering what to say then I remembered, “suddenly from out of nowhere”, which was the opening for a story I wrote for Junior Free Handwriting in 1969, it was sponsored by Brook Bond Tea, I still have the certificate somewhere, I was 11, I am now 20, my mental age that is. 

You see today’s piece is my 800^th according to the tally, if you google tally sticks you find something interesting to amuse the kids with. I have Phil Collins singing in the background as I talk to you, he is such a noisy person, all that drumming of his pencil on our glass coffee table. The song is another day in Paradise, which follows the theme of normality and nothing special.

What I’m trying to say is that, every day is normal, the same as the one before wherever and whoever you are, nothing changes, the tick and toc of life continues, boring really, well that’s what kids say over Summer Holidays. Go out into the garden and play this fine day, was what out dad used to say, the farmer in him saying don’t waste the sunshine, no we had no hay to turn and dry, but we could go outside and use the sunshine that was there.

So we are bored because nothing ever happens, we are bored with our lives, with our friends, with everything. We long for change or for adventure, try the 95 bus after 9pm, that’s an adventure you don’t want to have. Or walk down Simpson Lane as far as Trump Cul de Sac, that’ll blow your mind, and not in a good way. Or visit the late night Chemist on Low Lane, you’ll meet people you wished didn’t exist. These are some replies you can give to people who long for adventure, who yearn for change, who hate the status quo.

What makes our day different, finding the last carton of cranberry juice at the back of the freezer in Aldi, that’s a triumph for me when I have a thirst. Getting a smile from that really hot boy, or that amazing girl with the red hair, now that is something to make anybody’s day, you can insert your own object of desire. Something that makes us glow inside, such things are great things. Something ordinary such as a mum walking past your window with her toddlers in tow, this is nice this is family. Believe me, speaking as somebody who yearned for a family, seeing something as ordinary as common place as that makes me thank God.

So what else gives us a glow, winning the Lottery, getting a couple of quid so you can buy sweets and reluctantly share them with your offspring, dad you are not a child share those sweets or we are calling the Police. Just because I’m an adult doesn’t meant I stop liking sweets, kids are so one dimensional sometimes. Buying a potted plant instead of a lottery ticket, and watching the plant grow gives pleasure, watching all the pretty flowers, this is good. Judging from the Police helicopter at night somebody else is growing pretty flowers too, but not the kind that wins prizes at horticultural shows.

So another normal day dawns and you don’t expect much from it, until you bend down to pick up a pound in the street, and a pretty girl jogging falls over you. Only the pound has been glued there by the kids in no.96 they are making  a UTube video of their prank.

The girl swears at you, but as you both get up its love at first sight, she fell over you, and now she has fallen for you. She has great red hair, your weakness, and you are fat with silver hair, which is her weakness as she fell in love with Santa Claus as a child.  

Your wires are crossed literally, as you headphone wire from your Beats is tangled in her Sony wire, you start to untangle the wire but it’s too much for both of you, you kiss, you just had to kiss, as they say in for a pound in for a penny, or rather a glued pound to the pavement. Those cheeky kids with their UTube prank are getting more than they bargained for. And so a family is formed, because of those Utubers. Well that’s how it happens in Fairy Tales, I have reached story 800, more than the Brothers Grimm, will I be remembered like them or will my life be another normal day.