Overslept - RTOTD #840

I don't know why this didn't post on Wednesday when it was scheduled to, but I'm just going to repost it now rather than hold onto this until a more appropriate time to post it.

Day 840

I overslept. This wasn't even moderately a surprise. I'm not a morning person. Even after a decade of waking up before 6am every day, I'm still not a morning person. I'm a night owl. I don't want the day to end most days so I stay up far past the point of exhaustion. Or maybe exhaustion is the wrong word since that rarely happens. But past that point where I could deal with a recharge for a few hours with my eyes closed.

But I woke up late and didn't really worry too much about it. I didn't have anything important to do really and I wasn't expected anywhere until almost 11. It was only 9:15.

I got up and stumbled to the kitchen to make coffee. With eyes half closed, I scooped far too many grounds into the filter, filled the pot, dumped it into the back and flipped the switch. I was desperately in need of a shower. I'm not even moderately functional in the mornings until I've had a shower. I just feel dead until I shower. The coffee was just to wipe out the last remnants of sleep. The shower is what has always woken me up since I was in middle school.

I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror while waiting for the water to warm up in the shower and saw the normal morning expression of a body hating to come out of its recharge cycle. My hair looked like someone tried to use one of those vaccuum flowbie things from the 1990's and then hit it with a gallon of hair spray in the process. It was sticking up in every way possible and I really needed a shave. I hadn't even trimmed my face in weeks and I was starting to look like a lumberjack. It was bad.

When I emerged from the shower, I felt mostly alive. And I could smell the coffee waiting for me to finish the last cleanup work that the shower still wasn't entirely capable of dealing with.

I checked my phone and had a missed call from my dad. No voicemail. I'd get back to him later.

I got into the car and started my short commute. I drive everywhere, no matter how nice it is or how short of a trek it is. I drive. It helps me focus or unwind for the day.

Arriving, I got out of the car and looked at the time on my phone. 10:15. I had almost an hour before I had to be anywhere and it was a gorgeous day. I had actually bothered to pick up a newspaper that morning and there was a bench just outside the building I was headed for and it had a great view of people and a little bit of grass and trees in an otherwise developed area. Plus, the old buildings had great architecture and I always liked looking at old buildings. If nothing else, for the craftsmanship of them and the personality that a lot of newer buildings lack. I'm fascinated by building things and seeing the creative way that other peopld build things. This was the perfect place to sit, have a smoke, and read my newspaper.

The newspaper read like every other newspaper I'd ever read. A murder here. Corruption there. The government doing this or that. A new technology was discovered that could maybe change the world. People died. People were born. The world spun on and the cycle continued unabated like every other day or year or decade for as long as I've been alive.

I put down my newspaper and kicked my feet up on my bag and lit a smoke, enjoying the view of people walking past on the way to whatever trivialities their lives had in store for them that day. I was alive.

I picked up my  phone to check the time again when, before I could see it for more than a second, as if sensing that it was already in my hand, it began to buzz. I often kept it to vibrate only because I hate how much it shatters the silence when it rings.

The caller ID said it was my dad. I answered: "Hello"

Dad: "The towers are gone. Where are you?"

Me: "Wait... What? I"m sitting outside before my 11 o'clock. What are you talking about?"

Dad: "The towers are gone. 2 planes hit them early this morning and I've been trying to call you and they fell a little bit ago. They're gone."

Me: "What are you talking about? You mean they're just totaled?"

Dad: "No, I mean they fell. To the ground. They're completely gone."
The conversation turned to a blur and the world stopped spinning. I was frozen in the moment and the whole world looked like it had stopped. For a moment, everything stopped making sense. The world was upside down and it wouldn't switch back.

In the weeks and months and years since, the world never came quite close to flipping back to being right-side-up. Instead, we did. We turned ourselves upside down to match the world. We became different people. Sometimes for the better. Sometimes for the worse. But everything changed and somehow started to make sense again. But not in the good way. It was a perverse sort of sense where to the rational person, it would seem like insanity. But we had stopped being rational people somewhere along the line. We stopped making sense as well. Maybe it was before that cloudless, sunny september morning. Maybe it was afterwards. I don't quite know. Maybe we had already been upside down and for a few moments in september we flipped ourselves right side up and slowly tumbled back over into our heads because the world ceased to be the same.

It doesn't really matter, in the end. Because the world changed and we changed that day.

I don't really stop to think about it as much as I probably should. I don't think any of us do. But I want to take a moment to challenge you to do something again today. I want you to hug the people you care about. I want you to just say hello to people that you haven't said hi to in a while. I want you to go outside and enjoy the fresh air (whenever it's not raining, if maybe during... if that's your thing) and live life for a little bit. Because fucked up shit happens. Fucked up shit could happen again tomorrow and no amount of NSA wire tapping and recording the whole internet and strip searching grandma at the airport or taking  your shoes off or killing brown people on the other side of the planet is going to change that. If it's not terrorism, it'll be a bus or a drunk driver or a lightning strike. So shit might not be the same in your world tomorrow or it might not be the same for everyone tomorrow. Who knows.

But for today, just remember to smile and say hi to the people that you care about or know because nobody knows what tomorrow holds or what could happen in the world while you oversleep.