Rhetoric Rheya Tanner muses on life as a local
Extra Ordinary
There are some days you’ll remember for the rest of your life. And then there are days like this.
M
y alarm beeps at 7:30 a.m. on the dot. I hate when it does that. I roll out of bed and shamble to my closet to cobble together an outfit from the clothes that aren’t languishing in my laundry bin. I ponder this pink shirt I kinda like, but pink is diet red, and I already wore red this week, and I don’t want people to think I only wear red like some kind of serial killer. Blue is much more normal, surely. I think I need coffee. I arrive at work a little late, a little miffed to find that white SUV parked in my favorite space again. I retrieve my mug from the sink and do that weird ritual you have to do to get an office Keurig to work—the thing whirrs to life with the
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The Local
groan of a dying hamster while I check my email. That guy finally got back to me after a week, just to ask a question I answered two emails ago. Why is the universe like this. Coffee in hand, I face the list of tasks and the daunting blank screen in front of me. I know what needs to be done, but somehow that isn’t translating into doing it. It doesn’t help that I have half a tune stuck in my head and can’t remember for the life of me what song it is. Someone’s phone keeps going off, and I check mine every single time because it’s the same ringtone. I open Facebook for some reason—I’m not
WI N TE R G AR DE N
even bored—and scroll through the unfunny memes and baffling political views of my most distant acquaintances. My thumb drifts to the “Ten Funniest Tweets from Women This Week” post that Buzzfeed paid to show me. I chuckle at one of them, save it to my camera roll, send it to my friend. He texts back “lol” instead of “lmao.” I’m losing my touch. The 3 p.m. slump rolls around as it always does, and apparently my computer is as listless as I am, since it suddenly doesn’t remember how to open Word. And I still can’t remember that damn song, but I don’t imagine Googling “doot do do do do doo” will bear fruit,
so I suffer in silence until 5. I drive home, half-listening to the radio people argue about that celebrity who did that thing, and leash the dog for his evening walk. I admire his fluffy tail as he pees on the same 15 things he peed on yesterday. He steps in a puddle, and I smile at the little footie prints he leaves behind. What a perfect universe we live in. As the day winds down, I take a shower (feebly trying to remove even one hair with the dollar store razor I should’ve replaced a week ago) and crawl into bed. Just as I’m about to drift off into a cozy sleep—my eyes snap open. It was “Reelin’ in the Years.”
