Down Time

I had to get out of bed this morning because I kept going to work in my head. It was a typically frantic day in my classroom, but I seemed to be handling it fine. The problem was, I was acutely aware that I was still laying in my bed on Sunday morning. Opening my eyes and moving around my house was the only way I could shake the feeling I had that I needed to be someplace else.
Usually when my mind is asking for work, I go and find it. Today I got up and went for a run. Instead of doing work, I got a workout. And still, my thoughts were about work. As I ran, I remembered a job I had in high school. My dad had a friend that owned a news and smoke shop. He wanted someone to run the store for him on Sundays, the only day of the week that he didn't feel he absolutely had to be there.
It was a simple enough job, the most pressing thing about it was the responsibility that I was given. I had to enter through the back of the store, bring in the day's newspapers and set them on the stand. I opened the cash register with the keys that were hidden in the old Seven-Up machine that was in the back room. At nine o'clock, I flipped the sign from Closed to Open, unlocked the door and waited.
I read a lot of Rolling Stone magazine that summer. I read cycling magazines. I read the New York Times. I read for hours between customers. It seemed odd to me that location alone didn't draw more traffic. The shop was just around the corner from Boulder's Pearl Street Mall. I sat for hours on a stool behind the counter full of pipes and cigarette holders, behind jars of aromatic tobaccos, in front of a rack of dozens of imported and domestic cigarettes. No radio. No TV. Just endless magazines and seven hours of potential commerce.
One Sunday, a group of Austrian tourists wandered into the shop, and I found my high school German was abruptly overwhelmed as I attempted to make polite chatter with them. They bought a magazine and a pack of Gitanes. On another afternoon, Robin Williams and Pam Dawber were up the street, filming exteriors for "Mork and Mindy." I could hear the crowds cheering and calling. Some guy wandered in and told me what a hysterical show I had missed. On still another bright Sunday around noon, I accidentally swallowed a fly.
That was my job for three months of Sundays: Sitting on a stool, reading magazines, waiting for customers, swallowing flies. This morning, I felt some relief. I could watch TV. I could go outside. And it turns out that the last season of "Mork and Mindy" wasn't that funny anyway. Now I can relax.