By DragonSlayer
That day I was walking around in a thundercloud. The world was dark and dismal. I couldn't see any reason to be happy. The love of my life had just rejected me, my parents were on my case when they saw my slipping grades, I was broke and without a job, and there I was standing outside of music appreciation class just wanting to sleep forever.
Tom sauntered down the hallway. He has always been one of those people that will light up the room with their presence. I remember he always looked like he was bouncing, and the sun seemed to follow him wherever he went. As usual, he was humming some song I can't seem to recall the name of, probably something from Brittany Spears, or some other popular song. Because we had a few minutes before the bell rang, a couple of us started chatting about nothing particular. I don't even remember what brought up the subject, but one statement that Tom made will be burned in my memory for all time.
"You know what?" he said. "I don't remember the last time I had a bad day."
As we walked into the classroom and sat down I warned him, "You better be careful, pretty soon you will have all of them in a row. They tend to even out eventually." Me, I had my share of good days used up, I figured.
He patiently explained his thought to me. "No, you see, what I mean is that I can never remember having a bad day, ever!"
This was hard to believe. We questioned him about being sick, and he answered that when he was sick at least he was at home and not at school, and that made him happy. What about breaking up with his girlfriend? Well, he explained that he had good memories of her, but he did not miss her and did not see any reason to waste his time being miserable. The entire class kept quizzing him, but for every reason we had to be sad, he found something to be happy about.
I pondered this for a while. I looked over at my friends, and all those I knew with permanent scowls and thunderclouds. Is that how I truly wanted to be known? As a person who never smiles? Finally I just shrugged and thought, why not? Why not be happy? Happy people are rare, but they are the luckiest of all. I thought of one of the most joyful people I knew. She used to say to me, "I'm happy because God loved me enough to let me wake up this morning." That was it. Happiness was that simple. I smiled. The thundercloud disappeared and the sun came out.
