What a Day! What a Day!

In gym class we played freeze tag. I got tagged from behind right away, but nobody unfroze, me, so I stayed frozen for twenty-five minutes.

What a day!

My mom forgot to pack a lunch again, so I had to beg for food from other people and in the end I only got two prunes and a half eaten Oreo.

What a day!

In English we read Walter the Hungry Hippo and I tried to make my voice high and squeaky like I thought Walter's voice should be, but all the kids made fun of me and my teacher told me to stop fooling around.

At least now it's over. At least now, I won't have to go back to school for another sixteen hours. Sometimes I liked school and sometimes I just need to get away. Right now I'm so far way from school, that I can barely see the building. It won't be long until I'm at the Blue Ben.

My mother works at a waitress at the Blue Ben diner on 17^th street. She gets up while I'm still awake and goes to work. I wake myself up, get my own breakfast and wait for the bus. In the evenings, Aunt Rose comes to put me to bed and waits until my mother gets home.

In the afternoon I go to the Blue Ben. I find an empty booth and start doing my homework. My mother winks at me every time she walks by. When she finally has time to take a break, she'll come sit down next to me. "What a day!" she'll say, "What a day!"

I always say the same thing back.

"What kind of day was it Mama?"

That's when it gets really interesting. Sometimes Mama will say something like, "Well, today I won the lottery, met the President and bought the biggest house I can find." That's when I know it's a Silly Day and we pretend that our dreams have come true.

I'll say something like, "I was the starting guard in the NBA finals and I got straight A's."

Or maybe she'll say, "Today I met a dragon and he took me to the moon. It's quite nice on the moon, a little cold though." That's a Make-Believe Day and we'll try to think of the craziest thing that could ever happen.

I'll say something like, "I met an alien, and he showed me how to build a car out of toothpicks."

Once my mother told me we would have to move. We couldn't afford our apartment for a few months and we had to move in with Aunt Rose. Once she told me we couldn't go Florida to visit our cousins like she had promised. One day she just cried and hugged me. (That was the day her Mama died.) Those are Today Days. It means we tell the truth, no matter how hard it might be.

I like Backwards Days better. On a Backwards Day, everything happens out of order. On a Backwards Day, you might pretend that the first thing you did that day was go to bed. You'd say that you had breakfast in the afternoon and dinner first thing in the morning.

But my absolute favorite kind of day is a Mixed Up, Crazy, Nothing is What You Thought, Spin Around, Touch the Ground Day.

On Mixed Up, Crazy, Nothing is What You Thought, Spin Around, Touch the Ground Days, we laugh until milk squirts out of our noses. We tell jokes and sing songs and dance some of the silliest dances you've ever seen. Sometimes the other customers look at us funny, but we don't even care. On a Mixed Up, Crazy, Nothing is What You Thought, Spin Around, Touch the Ground Day it's impossible to be embarrassed.

I wonder what kind of day today is going to be? But I won't know until I get there. I can't wait!

I think I'll run.