A Cloudy Day

It was never a good day, Jason believed, when he woke up in the morning and looked out of his window at a cloudy sky. He wasn’t sure why he felt that way, but he had ever since he was a child. He tried to explain it to his friends, but they weren’t able to understand his logic. They in turn tried to come up with reasons why, but they too drew blanks. It was just something about a cloudy day. Whether the clouds ultimately gave way to the sun or decided instead to squeeze themselves dry, was immaterial. There was something about a cloudy sky when he first woke up, that made Jason want to return to bed and pull the sheets over his head and call out sick. He never did though.

In all the years he had felt that way, he had never once called out from either work or when he was a child let his parents know he wasn’t in the mood to go to school. In fact, Jason was a straight A student and was held up by one and all as being the model student. The same happened when he went on to university for his undergraduate degree, followed by a masters and then a doctorate. He was a straight A student throughout that entire time, period. And his degrees were in the most difficult of subjects, chemistry.

When he received his doctorate in record time, his parents were very proud of him as was his brother, Michael, who exemplified everything Jason was not. He was proud of that however and made damn sure he was. Michael graduated at the bottom of his class in high school, couldn’t get into university and had to settle for a technical school, where he failed every exam miserably. Jason though held up his elder sibling as a role model in high school regardless, because he felt that there was a reason completely unknown to him why he chose to do so poorly. Michael would shrug his shoulders when asked why, but he in turn was extremely proud of his younger sibling. In fact, Michael used it as a tool to become popular with the girls in school. The assumption was that if Jason was close to being a genius, then surely Michael must be close to being one as well. Michael held out the possibility of helping them with their chemistry homework. However, what they didn’t know was that he would run back home with Dorothy’s chemistry homework and then bribe his brother into finishing it. And the bribe? Getting into see the next Hollywood blockbuster at the Rialto for free.

It just happened that Michael had a side job in the projection room at the Rialto and could get his brother in for free. And Dorothy? well she idolised Michael believing that it was he in fact who was helping her to get to the top of her chemistry class.

“Mom,” Jason once asked his mother, “was it cloudy on the day I was born?”

“Oh, I have no idea,” she replied quietly, “I was in too much pain to look out of the window. Why do you ask?”

So, Jason confided in his mother about his feelings regarding a cloudy day. She couldn’t quite grasp why Jason would feel that way, in fact she was dumbfounded, “does that mean something bad happens on a cloudy day when you wake up and not see the sun.”

Jason shook his head, “no that doesn’t follow, it’s just a feeling I have when I look out of the window first thing in the morning and not see the sun.”

“What happens in the winter then when you wake up and its dark.”

For the first time in his life Jason was stumped. He had actually never thought about that. He tried to think back to the past winter when he woke up early in the morning for class and couldn’t see the sun and then it dawned on him.

“Well,” he told his mother who was busy ironing the sheets for his bed, “If I can see the stars then it isn’t cloudy, But, if I can’t, then it means its cloudy.”

Touché she thought, though she didn’t know the exact meaning of that word but had heard her genius son use it on numerous occasions. That made sense to her. Jason sat down at the table and opened Dorothy’s notebook.

He looked at her homework and shook his head, “boy she must be dumb if she can’t answer these questions about the periodic table,” he said out loud.

“Who’s got their period?” asked his mother who had put down the iron in disbelief that her genius son was talking about one of his girlfriend’s periods. In fact, she thought further, Jason never had a girlfriend. She asked the question again as Jason chose to ignore it the first time. “Ma,” he said, “not period, but periodic table in chemistry.”

“Oh,” she replied sounding foolish, “Chemistry and I didn’t get on well together.”

“I can see that,” replied her genius son who set about doing her homework. “I must tell Michael that I need another type of bribe. I can’t keep seeing the same movie over and over again.”

So, Jason never did find out why a cloudy day upset him so much.

In later years as he was working on a project that would ultimately yield him a Nobel Prize in chemistry he would stop occasionally and pose the same question to his colleagues, but they too couldn’t come up with the correct reason. That was until one day when the Nobel Prize list came out and he noticed that a person he had met years ago in university had won the Nobel Prize for Medicine and then he decided to call him because if anyone would know the reason, he would.

“Congratulations on winning your Nobel Prize!” Jason said to him on the phone as a warmup. “Congratulations to you too,” replied the psychiatrist, not really impressed by anyone in the chemistry field.

“I do have a favour to ask,” and Jason went on to explain his dilemma. The psychiatrist listened carefully and as he did, he began to panic slightly. He hadn’t got a clue as to the reason, but if he couldn’t come up with an answer and that got out to the Nobel committee, they might cancel his prize.

While they were on the phone he said to Jason, “very interesting. Would you like to be my patient?”

Well Jason immediately panicked as well, because if he said yes and the word got out and the Nobel committee heard about it, then they might cancel his prize believing him to be mentally incompetent. So, the telephone call went on for longer than it should’ve, with neither of the participants wanting to hang up on the other as it might engender ill feelings. Therefore, in order to bring the conversation, which by this time was bordering on silly, to an end, they called a truce. But the psychiatrist, as most psychiatrists do, had to have the last word.

“Jason,” he said calmly for the first time in a while, “when we pick up our prize it will be in the winter and in Sweden in the winter, the sun never comes out. So, which will it be, will you be miserable every day or will you force yourself to smile when you receive the prize?”

Jason had to think for a second and finally replied, “It will be the biggest day of my life, so I will definitely be smiling.”

“There you go,” replied the psychiatrist, “problem solved. It was all in your head.”

“Thanks,” replied Jason, genuinely impressed with his friend’s reasoning, “thanks. See you in Sweden.” The psychiatrist hung up the phone with a big smile on his face.

“Who were you talking to darling?” asked his wife as she walked downstairs from her third-floor bedroom.

“Oh, just another nut case needing my help,” he replied walking away from his wife without looking at her.