Another Day by Jonny Myers – The Aims Review

Just another day in the office and it is the same routine: open the vault, get the stations ready for the tellers, open the doors and get ready to greet the customers. Suzanne has worked as the bank manager for 15 years and nothing exciting had happened, until today.

Suzanne kept mostly to herself and did not have anyone she could call a “true” friend. She was adopted when she was young but still bounced around quite a bit from house to house, so she didn’t want to get too close to anyone. She made an exception with her husband of 20 years, who she loved with everything she was, but no other women in her life she could call who would drop everything upon request just to talk and drink wine. For this reason, Suzanne was somewhat of a dreamer.

The bank she worked at was in a small town. In spite of the constant renovations to the bank, they still could not get rid of the musty smell that has been there since the flood 30 years prior. No matter how many times the carpet has been cleaned or changed, there was still a faint smell of a cave in the rainforest. Suzanne’s dimly lit office was in the back of the bank. Her desk had the typical coverage with pictures of her and her husband and the trips they had taken. However, because she loved trolls, any kind of fuzzy haired trolls, they littered her office nearly floor to ceiling.

Even though she worked at a bank, Suzanne loved bank robbery stories. She constantly listened to the stories on the radio or watched the movies wondering how she would react in the same situation. She would sometimes get lost in her own story and daydream about how she would be the hero and receive a promotion to the head office. Some days she would have to reschedule meetings because she had just watched a new bank robbery movie the night before, and she was too far gone in her mind that she didn’t realize the time and would miss meetings. Everyone that she worked with just thought she was busy doing her job correctly and precisely; she had everyone fooled.

Only Suzanne knew why the meetings were neglected.

One day, as she was accepting an award from the mayor and looking off into the distance, she snapped out of the day dream because she saw something out of the ordinary. A customer was sitting with a banker, setting up a new account. Normally, this would not have caught her off guard, but something wasn’t normal about this, and she couldn’t put her finger on why. Since she was with the mayor in her mind, she only saw a blurred outline of the customer. Now she is hoping the woman would look around because she could only see a quarter of her profile. Suzanne had never seen the woman before, and she was taken aback. She started thinking that all her daydream training had finally paid off. This uncomfortable feeling she had about this woman must be because she is robbing the bank.

There was nothing out-of-the-ordinary about this woman that would have made anyone dubious. She was average height, blond hair and was wearing, in Suzanne’s opinion, a “cute” dress with a floral pattern. Even with her mind going a million-miles-an-hour, Suzanne wanted to know where she could find that dress.

Then, the woman finished her business, got up, and walked out the door. “She is casing the joint,” Suzanne thought. As soon as the woman went through the glass doors, Suzanne jumped up and went to talk to the banker. When he saw his boss, he had an immediate look of confusion, then the look disappeared with a shake of his head. She asked him every question she could think of about this woman, but all his answers were normal. She was tempted to look up her account, but because she loved her job so much, she did not. She knew if she did not have a reason to look up a customer’s information or had their permission to do so, she would be violating the privacy act and could possibly lose her job.

For three days, Suzanne watched everyone come through the door. She was surprised she had not visited the Mayor in so long. Usually, she is standing at the podium with him at least twice a day. But there is no time to day dream. On the fourth day, she was about to revert back and zone out when the mystery woman came walking in the door. Right away, Suzanne knew the exact reason she could not figure this woman out; she looked identical to Suzanne. They both stopped in their tracks and stared at each other. Who is this person? Where did she come from? Now she understood the banker’s confused look.

Bio: My name is Jonny Myers. I am 37, and I am a United States Marine veteran. I started at Aims Community College in 2009 with grand aspirations to be a helicopter pilot. During the program, I realized it was not the right fit for me nor my family, so I stopped pursuing the program and career. I focused more on my family and career and did not continue to go to school for a couple years. In 2015, my wife told me she was pregnant with our first, and only, child. Around the time that I was finding out my life was going to be changed, my work informed me that if I did not get my degree, I could no longer move up in the company. I knew if I stayed in the same position, I could not support my family in the way they deserved. It is then I decided to back to school. Although the creative writing class was a required elective for my new path in getting a business degree, Micah Ling made the class worth going to. She had me thinking of things in a way I had not before. It was for the love for my family I went back to school, and it is because of Micah this story was submitted. Thanks to my family and Micah!

Bio: My name is Jonny Myers. I am 37, and I am a United States Marine veteran. I started at Aims Community College in 2009 with grand aspirations to be a helicopter pilot. During the program, I realized it was not the right fit for me nor my family, so I stopped pursuing the program and career. I focused more on my family and career and did not continue to go to school for a couple years. In 2015, my wife told me she was pregnant with our first, and only, child. Around the time that I was finding out my life was going to be changed, my work informed me that if I did not get my degree, I could no longer move up in the company. I knew if I stayed in the same position, I could not support my family in the way they deserved. It is then I decided to back to school. Although the creative writing class was a required elective for my new path in getting a business degree, Micah Ling made the class worth going to. She had me thinking of things in a way I had not before. It was for the love for my family I went back to school, and it is because of Micah this story was submitted. Thanks to my family and Micah!