A Wonderful Day

“A Wonderful Day” is one of the outstanding stories of the first biannual International Short Story Contest 2018 written by Suhansa Nanayakkara, Visakha Vidyalaya, Colombo, Sri Lanka.

A Wonderful Day

DING… DONG…DING…DONG…

The school bell rang and I packed my bag quickly, because my mother always says that I am the last to come out from the school gate. There were many parents near the gate and my mother was also among them.

After coming to the mainroad, we got into a taxi. As a habit I always tell my mother what happened at school on our way home since she is my best friend. She enjoys listening to me as it recalls her school time as a student.

When we were close to our home, my mother found out that she did not have change to pay for the taxi. So we went to a nearby road side lottery seller. We had a thousand rupee note. So we had to buy five tickets to get proper change. Even though my mother said that we can scratch the tickets after going home, I was pestering her to scratch the tickets immediately. When I scratched one of the tickets I felt that we have won something. When I mentioned it to my mother she didn’t believe it. She thought I was joking. I wiped my eyes and I looked at it again …

And again…

That was to make sure that I was not day dreaming. I was right, that’s exactly my teacher taught me; one followed five zeros is hundred thousand.

So this is it!

I am right!

It really is one hundred thousand. I screamed cheerfully.

While I was staring at the ticket, my mother was calling me “hurry up Suhansa, we need to go soon”.

I grabbed her hand showed my ticket to her. She was excited and overjoyed. She said “I can’t believe this”.

My mother called my father right away, told him the exciting news. We all went to the Sri Lanka Lotteries Board. My father showed our ticket and got our price money happily.

Finally I was praised by my mother. She said to my father “If not for this child I will never check the lottery ticket, I just wanted to get change money for the taxi, after all who thinks we will be lucky enough to win a lottery”.

On our way home we went shopping and got many beautiful frocks, shoes and lot of sweets to me.

I asked for a mobile phone and my mother disapproved it immediately saying that I am still too young to have a one though I am five feet tall and a mobile phone is not even five inches long.

While she was telling that, I was thinking what to ask next. So many fancy things came into my mind. But I thought to ask something useful for my studies. That is when we were passing the Sarasavi Book shop.

Quickly I asked my father, “Can you please stop the car at Sarasavi Bookshop?”

My mother asked do you have anything specific to buy today.

I said we were asked by our Mathematics teacher to buy a mathematical set and I need to buy one. My mother said “Ok let’s go then”

We went to the bookshop and there were marvelous things.

I loved the sticker sheets, glitter pens, high lighters, multi-colour pens, greeting cards, story books and game sets. I almost wanted to buy everything. But knowing my mother, I bought only the ones that I needed and some story books as gifts for my friends.

After that we went home and on our way I suggested that “Can we eat from a restaurant today?”

“That’s lovely”, said my father.

But my mother said, “We have prepared lunch at home and we can’t waste the food, we will go another day”.

After so much shopping, we came home and I started eating the sweets one by one. My father was complaining that eating too much sugar is not healthy.

I was about to finish my favorite milk chocolate. I looked at the last piece and was thinking how tasty it was. Suddenly someone knocked on my shoulder.

“Suhansa, wake up, you are late!, get ready soon to go to school”

Oh God….. I felt very sad because it made me realized it was only a dream.

What a wonderful day it was!