That's usually not the case. Normally, I wake up, roll over, see the sunlight through my window and take it as a cue to start my day. A shower and some morning reading ensues and then it's off to busy the day with class, errands and interactions with people around me. Normally, I accomplish these morning activities dutifully and with workmanlike purpose. This morning was quite different.
I laid in bed for another five minutes, knowing fully that since I already saw that sunlight, I had no chance of falling back to sleep. I tossed and turned a little longer, trying to muster a reason to get out of bed on this Sunday morning -- and none came.
Then my phone rang. It was a stroke of luck really; if I hadn't woken up five minutes earlier I probably would not have taken the call. It was my sister, Natalie.
Natalie entered her senior year of high school last week and I'm envious of that. Senior year was a transcendent year for me, a perfect combination of a lack of responsibility mixed with the authority of being the oldest in school with all of your friends and I tried to make the best of it. I hope Natalie has the same level of fun that I had and I'm positive she will.
The first step in her senior year was to attend the Back to School Dance. Most of you are familiar with high school dances. Vice Versa was the best because you get to dress up to a theme and everyone looked great, Prom was generally pretty fun if you liked your date, and all the other ones fell into a void of mediocrity. The Back to School Dance was exceptionally mediocre.
Peoria Notre Dame, my sister's current academic institution and my alma mater, has been on a crusade that dates back to my senior year against a prevalent form of dancing -- grinding. It's a perfectly reasonable crusade for a Catholic high school to battle against. Grinding flies in the face of most Catholic tenets and sets a pretty poor example to wide-eyed freshmen every year. Above all, grinding is the most uninspiring form of dancing ever created. I'm not even sure it can be classified as dancing. Seriously, it's a disgrace. Even a dance like the Bernie is far more respectable than grinding and loads more fun.
For some reason, grinding continues to grace us with its presence and high schoolers can't get enough of it. So as PND administrators are patrolling the dance floor trying to corral any outbreaks of that diseased form of dancing, my sister (also an opponent of grinding) tells me the majority of the senior class decides to simply leave the dance and not return. Apparently, the majority included every senior except Natalie and her friends. I mean, I guess that's one way to deal with things, but what a crappy way to handle adversity.
Anyways, Natalie and her cohorts find themselves in a difficult position. They still want to have fun at their last Back to School Dance ever, but were abandoned by their unimaginative peers. Luckily, with a little brainstorming, they concocted an antidote to their precarious situation. My sister and her friends approached some freshmen boys who were outlying the dance floor and started to dance with them; actual dancing, the kind that's fun and active and exhilarating. They continued this for the remaining duration of the dance.
At this point in the story, I'm no longer languishing in my bed. I'm actually sitting on the edge of my bed and smiling because I know my sister just made those freshmen's collective nights. In a perfect ending to the story, Natalie was walking back to her car after the dance was over and happened to see one of the freshman boys they were dancing with climbing into his parents car. She decides to give him a friendly wave and, in response, the boy blows her a kiss! Now, besides the fact that the next time I'm in Peoria I'm going on a manhunt to possibly end this kid's life, that's inarguably the coolest thing that he's ever done. His irrational confidence is going to be off the charts for about two weeks, ending when he sees his life flash before his eyes before getting laid out by that hulked-out, monster sophomore linebacker at football practice. Order will eventually be restored.
Natalie finishes telling the story and I confess that it's probably one of the better ones I've heard in awhile. I tell her to keep living the dream and joke that she should jot down the kid's address for my future reference.
After the phone call ends, I look out the window and the sunlight has a different, inviting quality to it. I make a coffee and bagel and head to my balcony, where I'm greeted by the most beautiful day in recent memory. A cool breeze is blowing through the trees, people are walking by with smiles on their face, and Maroon 5 is playing softly through the screen door. Some days are easy to start and others are much harder.
Sometimes, a morning story helps.
