Sunday Morning by Eric Shively

The glimmering light peers in through the clear glass windows. I sit up holding my head, groggy, still aching from the party the night before. My dad knocks on the door heavily. He questions me why I was home so late. "Why do you always have to be on my back, Dad?" I thought to myself. Church is in thirty minutes. I put on some pants and casually wander to the kitchen. Looking through the cabinet, I only find Cheerios to eat. "Ugh, whatever," I thought. My ears perk up as the conversation between my parents grows louder.

"Yes! He's lying!" My mom coarsely laughs. Suddenly my heart starts beating frantically. Do they know?! My mind is racing now. My mother comes in and asks if I actually vacuumed the garage this weekend. Phew! The bullet whizzes past.

I was rather bored in my Church class today. Tired too, my head still throbbing. Only the teacher, a shy girl, and myself today. "Great!" I thought sarcastically, this was going to take forever. After that was over, my dad and I start heading down the highway across the rough gravel in his Tacoma. I start to realize what a crappy day this was turning out to be. The next nine hours were going to be spent finishing the weekend's homework, studying for the Pre-Calculus test with my brother, and sitting at home. No friends and no fun.

I grew very lazy lounging around the uninteresting house. It feels like I'm doing nothing with my life. Then my friend texts me about being frustrated with this girl. As exciting as my day has been going, I want to know more. But now he says he doesn't want to talk about it. Fuck, things are really starting to get annoying.

The review for calculus begins and it feels like I'm not learning anything. An hour into it, I start developing another headache. I really don't want to do this right now. Man, it feels like I wasted the whole day. Today was pretty shitty. What did I really accomplish? But then, for some reason, my whining vanished. The answer dawned on me.

I realized that complaining about problems is pointless. I set my own disastrous mood. This Sunday was a good day. I woke up. I'm alive. My bed was warm, my parents care about me, and there was food to eat. My dad took me to Lloyd's donuts and I had the most amazing cinnamon roll. I actually played some pretty fun games with the teacher and that shy girl. We went out and got Starbucks before church ended. Of course I ordered the Venti Vanilla Bean Frappucino. I had a great time talking to my awesome dad on the way home.

My brother is nice enough to freely tutor me on his knowledge of calculus and I started to learn a lot. I had a delicious dinner with my loving family, and had the luxury of a warm shower at night. Life is actually really good. If you take a step back, see how many things you're lucky to have and probably don't deserve, and relish in the fact that today, was a good Sunday morning.