Six O'clock in the Morning

It’s Six O’Clock in the Morning Yet Again

This used to be my favourite time of the day. I used to be a competitive long distance runner as a teenager, and as a young man in his early twenties. I would get up in the morning at six o’clock sharp and run like the wind around the neighbourhood three or four times. My life’s goal was to be an Olympic racer, to run for my country and win every race. I had no other plans in mind for my future.

But then what I called the ‘great accident’ took place with sudden violence. An idiot driver in his speedy car came up behind me and struck me in the left leg. I could not run anymore after that. I was doomed to walking with a limp for the rest of my life. It wouldn’t be the same thing to limp around the neighbourhood at six o’clock. There would not be any purpose for it.

With my initial dreaming plans for my future life no longer possible, I took a college course in business and found out that I had a mind for figures, and was able to get a decent job.

Now I still get up at six o’clock sharp every morning, even weekends, and sit in a comfy chair in the middle of the front porch. It does not compare well with my morning runs, but at least I am still outside at six o’clock and I can enjoy a little bit the joys of scanning the skies and generally just being an early morning person. And sometimes people who know me and are driving to work in the next two hours after six will wave at me and I will return the wave with a smile and a wave. At least it gives me a little pleasure. At eight o’clock I walk over to the bus stop across the street from my place and make my way to work in the back of the bus, sitting alone.

I did not tell anyone at work about this new way of dealing with six o’clock, but one of my neighbours found out about it from one of his neighbours and spread the story to other people at work. The phrase ‘are you sleeping, brother John’ is sometimes spoken when I arrive at work.

I am not tired at work as I always go to bed quite early, and always got plenty of sleep each night – years of practice made that possible. Of course that meant that I hardly ever went to parties. And when I do, I leave early enough to make sure that I can get up at my usual time of six o’clock sharp in the morning.

My mother worries about my social life. I am an only child, as my parents divorced a couple of years after my birth. She never remarried, but she very much wants grandchildren. She feels certain that such a thing could not happen as long as I have six o’clock mornings, and early evenings. She always mentions that when I go to visit her.

Saturday Dinner with Mom

It is Saturday night for dinner. John almost always goes to his mother’s place for his best dinner of the week. They are going to have their usual conversations. He talks about work, and she asks him whether there are any woman in the company where he works that could be a potential girlfriend, then a wife as a partner for him.His answer is always negative. He gives his standard answer that for all that he knows the good ones are already taken. It isn’t actually true if he would be honest.

There was a new female employee at work, and he had heard that she, her name is Wanda, has just moved into a house not too far from his. One day in the lunchroom he hears her mention that she has two dogs that she loves very much: one a male golden labradoodle, the other a mixture of several Mexican breeds. She goes so far as to say that they are her children. He does not say anything about this to his mother, knowing that she loves dogs.

Next Monday

Next Monday starts as usual for John. He is up by his usual six o’clock, and is studying the blue skies all around him. Then, much to his surprise, he sees a woman walking two dogs down the sidewalk. One dog is big black and furry, the other is a light colored mix of what looked like a mix of several breeds. What really strikes him is that the dog-walker is Wanda from work. He waves in her direction, and much to his surprise and pleasure, she waves back at him. More than that, she crosses the road with her dogs, and goes right up his driveway to where he is sitting. Her first words to him are “I see that we are both early morning people.”

John tells his story about formerly being a competitive runner, and the fact that a bad driver took that away from him with one foul blow. When they are talking the big black dog snuggles up to John and he reaches out his right hand to pat the big fellow.

Wanda then speaks with an encouraging tone asking John if he wants to take the black dog’s lead and walk him to her place. John surprises himself by agreeing to do so. John did not think of the time. When they got to Wanda’s place, she asked him whether she could drive him back home to get what he might need for work. He agreed. She suggested next that she could drive the two of them to work. Again he agrees.

This becomes a new early morning routine for the two of them. John breaks another one of his daily patterns when he asked her over to his place for dinner – dogs allowed to come. She said yes and the night grows old there after they had eaten.

It isn’t more than a couple of weeks before they go to his mother’s for a Friday night dinner. She is overjoyed to meet up with John’s ‘girlfriend’. Wanda appears tolerant of all the questions that are asked of her.

At nine o’clock they both leave, so that they can both walk the dogs as usual at six o’clock Saturday morning. All four of them sleep in John's bedroom, both of the humans with a dog snuggled beside them.