Rush Again

A Day in the Life


6:30 A.M.
An alarm clock goes off. A long arm emerges from a mess of blankets and fumbles around sleepily for the source of the noise. It’s a classic rock radio station, once again playing Rush. The hand knocks over a lamp and a glass of water in its search for the nuisance. The glass is saved from shattering on the tile floor by landing on one of the textbooks strewn across the floor, which it promptly spills its contents all over. The hand reaches its destination: the snooze button, which it hits eight times.

6:40 A.M.

An alarm clock goes off again. It’s the classic rock radio station, once again playing Rush, but it might be the other classic rock radio station so at least this isn’t getting too redundant. The hand arises once more. This time it firmly grasps the clock radio and, with a fantastic pull, jerks the cord from the outlet and sends the alarm clock flying across the room, where it hits the opposite wall with a satisfying whack. Content, the figure under the covers rolls over and resumes sleep.

8:30 A.M.

It’s at this point the figure finally emerges from its hibernation and sleepily gets to his feet. His name is Daniel and at this point he’s only awake because his window is open and his neighbor apparently just pulled up in his car, which has the stereo on full blast which is tuned to a classic rock radio station which is playing Rush. Gathering from his cell phone that it is 8:30 and he’s already missed most of his class, Daniel then begins to wonder why the alarm clock is on the floor across the room and why his literature textbook is completely soaked in water. Coming to the conclusion that he shouldn’t worry about it, Daniel decides to go to school.
Now Daniel looks like every other lazy ass, goofy looking seventeen year old white kid with a lot of hair. His hobbies aren’t that unique from every other degenerate hippie bastard his age; spend all day with the friends smoking, go out at night and try to get laid, go to someone’s house, crash, and repeat the next. He’s the kind of guy that spends weekend nights in the back of cars and on people’s floors. He’s the guy that’s up at 2 a.m. pulling stickers out of his ass because he landed in a cactus after jumping a fence to get away from the cops that raided the party. He’s the guy you’re not sure if he’s going to be a major success or legendary failure, because he’s leaning both ways all the time.
There isn’t that much background for him. He was born the twenty second minute of the twenty second hour of the twenty second day of April 1991 (to twenty two doctors they say.) He’s lived his whole life in Tucson, the city where dreams go to die. But that doesn’t mean anything; aside from the local law enforcement Daniel loves his hometown and all the freaks, geeks, hobos, criminals, druggies, crazies, maniacs, and just straight up weirdoes that inhabit it, partly because he can relate to each of them somehow, and partly because he’s never lived anywhere else before. He’s someone that feels like life is one big blur, not necessarily in that the days go by fast, it’s just he can’t differentiate one day from the next so he just goes with the flow, not knowing where life will lead next, not sure if he’ll be pulling stickers out of his ass one day or be sitting in class the next trying to write about himself in the third person.