A Sunday Smile

by Adan Díaz de León R.

967103

John has a routine. Everyone has a routine and John is not the exception. Routines are for people who are afraid of doing different things each day, always having morning, afternoon and night in that order, and doing exactly what the morning people do each morning; then following the activities afternoon people use to perform on afternoons, ending sleeping and waiting for the next morning to come. Each morning John wakes up, turns the alarm off and tries to fall asleep again but his subconscious reminds him that time has come to start the same day that the one before, and probably, the same day that will follow this one. After having taken an exact 16 minute shower and taken a brief breakfast consisting in bread, coffee and eggs, he takes his brown leather backpack and leaves the little department at the top of the building number two out of three-11 floor buildings full of departments. The only difference between every day of the week and this day of the week is that it is Sunday. Sundays are the only free day a week for every person to create a routine. John uses to go to a park two blocks down from his apartment, where there’s that old little white hand-painted bench; the only white bench in the whole park full of red ones. He never sits on that bench, neither he nor any other people. John arrives and takes the red bench that is below a tree affected by the lasting autumn. John cleans the leaves that had fallen over the bench and sits down. Takes his little black covered notebook out, and starts to stare at the landscape, at the people. If we took a look at John’s notebook we would probably notice that it’s blank. However, every single Sunday he goes to the park, he stares for an hour or two waiting for something like magic come out of nowhere to make him draw, or at least to give him something to draw. John looks at the tree, but it’s too big to draw; many leaves, too tricky. A father and son playing football, they are moving, almost impossible to catch a moment; and John doesn’t like football anyway. A couple kissing over there at the top of that tiny mount, this makes him say “thank you for making me notice my loneliness”, obviously in his head. He looks at the other benches, where there’s a little girl reading J. M. Barrie’s “Peter Pan” out loud with her mom, but John hates Peter Pan, because it was the only book his mom read to him when he was a child. Nothing to draw, again… And when she reads “Next moment he was standing erect on the rock again, with that smile on his face and a drum beating within him. It was saying, "To die will be an awfully big adventure." In that precise moment something takes out John from his astonishment. Something isn’t right, something’s out of order: someone’s sitting on the white bench. John starts to turn his head slowly up and left, trying to find out, discretely, who is the one that dared to seat there, but his discretion doesn’t work so well and when he finally looks at the bench, there’s a red-haired young woman sitting and staring at him with a pair of blue eyes that penetrated all way into John’s body. John doesn’t know what to do, his body wouldn’t respond to any order. Time passes and it feels like it’s been hours since they started staring at each other, but just after 13 seconds of non-reactive eye contact, the girl on the white bench outlines a smile bright enough to wake up John from his lucid dream. After a few seconds more, the girl stands up, takes her brown leather purse and walks away. John stays still, doing nothing more than smile, but now he knows two things: 1. His days may not be the same routine after this day, and 2. He’ll be drawing that girl until the day he meets her again.

Bibliography:
Barrie, J. M.; “Peter Pan & Wendy”, London 1911

Inspirated by the song "A Sunday Smile" by Beirut
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kQ4qXMzpH-Y