On Being Thankful
by Emily Reed
I knew the situation all too well. For the majority of my school career, I had been putting off assignments until the last minute. I was never late, but, I was always the last person to turn it in on time. This instance was no different.
The teacher prefaced this assignment as “the final opportunity to show me what you know.” I saw it as more busy work that I could finish in one sitting. On Sunday, from 8 p.m. until 11:30, I wrote until I had a finished product that was of decent caliber. Not my best work, but not the worst. Since the assignment was due at midnight, I had to turn it in on Google Classroom right away.
As I went to turn it in, something horrible happened. A notice on my computer flashed across the bright screen. The terrifying words read, “Restart to install software updates, effective immediately.”
Panic filled me as the words registered in my brain. I had to turn my essay in but luckily, I had 30 minutes to spare before it was due. I didn’t think the restart would take 30 minutes, so my initial panic subsided.
When the computer finally restarted after 10 minutes, I breathed a sigh of relief. I would be able to make the deadline!
I calmly opened Google Chrome, signed into Google Drive, and pulled up my assignment. As I scanned through it quickly, I saw that something was off. Literally.
The last five pages of the paper were deleted! I tried clicking the back arrow, the undo button, and even the keyboard shortcut for undo. I looked through the revision history and there was no record of the last five pages ever being typed.
At this moment, I had no idea what to do and I instinctively burst out into tears. If you’ve ever met me before, you’d realize how incredibly odd it is for me to cry, let alone ugly cry. I cried because I wasn’t at the mercy of myself. I was at the mercy of drugs and worse yet, malfunctioning technology.
I was on so many uppers and downers that my body was doing zigzags and didn’t know which direction to go. I’d have tremors that ran through my body and a racing pulse, and next I’d be seconds away from falling asleep.
I never bothered to read the labels. I pulled from the pile of medications on my nightstand that wouldn’t kill me when combined (at a reasonable level).
In my drug induced distress, I stormed down the stairs while sobbing worse than someone after watching Titanic. I flung the front door open and started walking. I didn’t know where I was going because that wasn’t important. All I wanted to do was get away from there.
As I walked up the hill, I started talking to myself in between sobs. “Why did this happen to me?! What did I do wrong?! I know I’m a procrastinator but I would have turned it in on time! Is the universe conspiring against me? That must be it. I apologize to Venus, Mercury, and Neptune for all my transgressions.”
I was busy apologizing to the planets when a black Suburban pulled up alongside me. The driver rolled down the window and asked, “Hey, are you okay? Do you need a ride home?”
His comment was deserved because I looked like an absolute trainwreck. My hair was scrunched up in a rat’s nest, mascara ran down my face, eyeshadow was smudged all over my face, and I wore mismatched clothes to wander the streets at midnight. To save the scrap of dignity I had left, I took several deep breathes so I could form a coherent response.
“Yeah, I’m okay and I don’t need a lift. Thanks for the offer,” I replied.
The elderly man didn’t look convinced but he drove away anyways.
His words and the look of pity on his face made me realize that I was being melodramatic and needed to sober up emotionally and physically.
Suddenly, the words of the sermon I heard earlier in church floated back to me. “Give thanks in all circumstances.”
I realized that this message had practical applications in my life because I didn’t have to pray to a higher power, be it a God or the planets, to be thankful for what I had.
While walking, I turned it into a game for myself. For every road sign I saw, I had to say something I was thankful for. I made my own version of Count the Blessings called Count the Road Signs and Name your Blessings.
Once I arrived home, my mood was significantly lifted. I splashed water in my face and ran up to my room in a clearer state of mind than before.
When I sat in front of the computer screen, I realized that I still had 10 pages of the essay and that writing the other 5 shouldn’t take too long because I had written them before. The ideas were fresh in my head as I began typing with such vigor that my fingers thudded against the keyboard as if I was playing Whack-a-Mole.
I finished by 2 a.m. and as I went to turn in my essay, I noticed that the turn in time was set at 5 a.m. and not midnight. I wasn’t late! And for that, I was thankful.
The teacher prefaced this assignment as “the final opportunity to show me what you know.” I saw it as more busy work that I could finish in one sitting. On Sunday, from 8 p.m. until 11:30, I wrote until I had a finished product that was of decent caliber. Not my best work, but not the worst. Since the assignment was due at midnight, I had to turn it in on Google Classroom right away.
As I went to turn it in, something horrible happened. A notice on my computer flashed across the bright screen. The terrifying words read, “Restart to install software updates, effective immediately.”
Panic filled me as the words registered in my brain. I had to turn my essay in but luckily, I had 30 minutes to spare before it was due. I didn’t think the restart would take 30 minutes, so my initial panic subsided.
When the computer finally restarted after 10 minutes, I breathed a sigh of relief. I would be able to make the deadline!
I calmly opened Google Chrome, signed into Google Drive, and pulled up my assignment. As I scanned through it quickly, I saw that something was off. Literally.
The last five pages of the paper were deleted! I tried clicking the back arrow, the undo button, and even the keyboard shortcut for undo. I looked through the revision history and there was no record of the last five pages ever being typed.
At this moment, I had no idea what to do and I instinctively burst out into tears. If you’ve ever met me before, you’d realize how incredibly odd it is for me to cry, let alone ugly cry. I cried because I wasn’t at the mercy of myself. I was at the mercy of drugs and worse yet, malfunctioning technology.
I was on so many uppers and downers that my body was doing zigzags and didn’t know which direction to go. I’d have tremors that ran through my body and a racing pulse, and next I’d be seconds away from falling asleep.
I never bothered to read the labels. I pulled from the pile of medications on my nightstand that wouldn’t kill me when combined (at a reasonable level).
In my drug induced distress, I stormed down the stairs while sobbing worse than someone after watching Titanic. I flung the front door open and started walking. I didn’t know where I was going because that wasn’t important. All I wanted to do was get away from there.
As I walked up the hill, I started talking to myself in between sobs. “Why did this happen to me?! What did I do wrong?! I know I’m a procrastinator but I would have turned it in on time! Is the universe conspiring against me? That must be it. I apologize to Venus, Mercury, and Neptune for all my transgressions.”
I was busy apologizing to the planets when a black Suburban pulled up alongside me. The driver rolled down the window and asked, “Hey, are you okay? Do you need a ride home?”
His comment was deserved because I looked like an absolute trainwreck. My hair was scrunched up in a rat’s nest, mascara ran down my face, eyeshadow was smudged all over my face, and I wore mismatched clothes to wander the streets at midnight. To save the scrap of dignity I had left, I took several deep breathes so I could form a coherent response.
“Yeah, I’m okay and I don’t need a lift. Thanks for the offer,” I replied.
The elderly man didn’t look convinced but he drove away anyways.
His words and the look of pity on his face made me realize that I was being melodramatic and needed to sober up emotionally and physically.
Suddenly, the words of the sermon I heard earlier in church floated back to me. “Give thanks in all circumstances.”
I realized that this message had practical applications in my life because I didn’t have to pray to a higher power, be it a God or the planets, to be thankful for what I had.
While walking, I turned it into a game for myself. For every road sign I saw, I had to say something I was thankful for. I made my own version of Count the Blessings called Count the Road Signs and Name your Blessings.
Once I arrived home, my mood was significantly lifted. I splashed water in my face and ran up to my room in a clearer state of mind than before.
When I sat in front of the computer screen, I realized that I still had 10 pages of the essay and that writing the other 5 shouldn’t take too long because I had written them before. The ideas were fresh in my head as I began typing with such vigor that my fingers thudded against the keyboard as if I was playing Whack-a-Mole.
I finished by 2 a.m. and as I went to turn in my essay, I noticed that the turn in time was set at 5 a.m. and not midnight. I wasn’t late! And for that, I was thankful.