Same Day, Different Shit

A friend of mine wrote an account of her average day a while ago, to lay to rest the falsehoods of our lives on Facebook and other social media. It has inspired me to do likewise. Honesty can be a merciless gruel to swallow, so if you have an aversion to the truth, I advise you to cast your eyes away from the text now.

I open my eyes around 7 a.m., and after approximately fifteen minutes of my dream logic resentfully confirming that waking up is the greatest indignity ever imposed upon mankind, I leap out of bed, whipping the entire duvet into the air. It lands perfectly-made seconds after my feet hit the ground. I do this for the sole purpose of feeling more productive in the first few seconds of my day than a hippie is in the entirety of his. I stomp to the other side of the apartment to put on the heater for my shower, and drop a depth-charge in the toilet, grumbling something about "damn, dirty layabouts". I have a breakfast comprising mainly of wheat chaff, and then stretch my way towards the bathroom, much in the manner of Kevin Bacon dancing out his anger in Footloose. I step into the shower —after my five-minute, dancing detour — and spend ten minutes scrubbing myself in soapy water, striking as many erotic poses as possible. After towelling myself down, I turn on an emphatic piece of classical music and, standing stark naked in my living room, I affirm my whole being by punching my fists in the air Rocky-style for a few minutes. I dress myself in the manner of Batman in the Joel Schumacher films and ride fearlessly out into the day ahead. 

Artist's depiction of me in the shower.

Having such an observant mind and a misanthropic heart, walking to work is usually a horrible experience. I can't help noticing the egregious number of SUVs in my neighbourhood, especially considering how narrow many of the suburban roads are. An impractically-sized gas-guzzler in suburbia serves mostly as a vehicle for your sense of status. It ought to grant you some special demarcation, but, alas, nearly everyone else in your neighbourhood has one. Pro-tip: buy an SUV and move to a less affluent suburb. Additional pro-tip: don't buy a car for the sake of status. I pass by cyclists coming at me on the footpath; I pass by litter; I pass by reckless driving; I pass by primary school children; I pass by dog shit; I pass by owners of shitting dogs, many of whom have less of a sense of responsibility than the primary school children I see and never clean it up. 

My working day is a blur. Days meld into one another, and we teachers suffer from TEFL amnesia, where we couldn't possible tell you what we taught the day before. Sometimes I teach in the afternoons, so I drop one off around lunchtime, in order to prevent it interrupting my class later. After work, I head home and relax a while. Three days of the week, I go to the gym, which is a twenty-five minute walk away. During the summer, if you are interested in seeing a real pair of steely calves, pull up a seat along my walking route and you will see me march by in shorts. If my performance is a bit sluggish in 'La Casa de los Machos', I sit it out in one of the toilet cubicles until I dump something of significance. After approximately an hour of mostly resisting the urge to judge harshly the poor (and often dangerous) form of my fellow gym mates, I head back home.

Depending on the evening, I also like to socialise with friends, go to the cinema, write, read, or watch some TV. When I meet with friends, after a long, laborious day, we yawn, halt mid-sentence to wait for our train of though to return, repeat ourselves, and lapse into undesirable conversations about work. I can never stay out too long, regardless of whether it's a weekday or the weekend. My high-fibre diet requires me to stay within close proximity to a well-kept toilet bowl. To paraphrase a conversation I had with a housemate many years ago, we no longer have the sphincter of a nine-year-old playing a two-hour football match (perhaps this is a consequence of those lengthy football matches).

As the day wanes, so do I. In the safe comfort of my bedroom, my mind slips out of the colon of consciousness into the toilet bowl of dreams. They say money never sleeps, yet, on the salubrious street where I live, no sound disturbs the slumbering heads of the residents. In the suburbs, the well-to-do suburbs, the SUVs sleep tonight.