On making a day

Yesterday I was incredibly tired.
It seems like every time i get 7 hours of sleep, my body freaks out.
As if it's so accustomed to getting only 5 or 6 that it doesn't know what to do with the extra hour.
So in order to actually have a good night's sleep i need to bargain for more than 8 hours so my brain has time to figure out how to continue sleeping.
The biggest problem is that it makes it virtually impossible for me to have a restful sleep on a school night, as when i actually try to go to bed early, i just end up screwing up my day even more.

Anyway, you get the idea.
I was really tired and not feeling tip-top yesterday.
So after school i found myself at the local neighborhood South Berwick Cumberland Farms, which is actually only about an 8th of a mile away from the next local neighborhood Cumberland Farms, across the boarder in Rollinsford.
I had $10.
I bought a small bag of beef jerky, a quart of chocolate milk, and some candy.
As the guy rang it up it turned out to be $9.76.
I was relieved, because with Maine taxes, you never know when you're going to go over your $10 bill, they're always taking your money for their good education system and low property taxes.

As i handed the guy my money, he said, "i'll throw in a penny so i can give you back a quarter."
At first i was confused, but when he handed me a quarter in change, my mood changed entirely.
I thanked him, and went back to my car happier than i had been since i woke up that morning.
You could say that the cashier made my day by giving me a quarter.

Now, we could get into the details on why quarters are so good; every quarter i get in change goes into the cupholder in my car so that i can pay for tolls when people randomly tell me that they want to hang out in newington.
I'd go as far as to say that quarters are the only useful coin in our currency system.

Thinking back on it later, I realized that the cashier probably had no idea how much he impacted me. He just tossed a penny into the cash register to make my life a little easier.
Maybe that's what was so good- he made an effort, small as it may have been, to make someone else- me- have a better day.

I'm a firm believer that if we all were just a tad bit nicer to each other, just a smidgin more thoughtful, we'd be much further than we are now.