An Incredibly Normal Wednesday
A Day in the Life of Average Statistic
Rcw99
This is a tale in which absolutely nothing happens. Nothing at all. There is no problem that needs solving, no friendships to be made, no monster, no romance, and no danger.
This isn't the story of the heroes, the do-gooders, the valiant, or the powerful.
For so long we’ve heard about the tales of the ponies thrust into fantastical situations against all odds, and who attract danger and excitement at every turn. But what about the ones who are normal?
This is their story. This is the story of the typical ponies that make up the often exciting land of Equestria.
This story begins with a very ordinary earth pony: Average Statistic. His coat is a normal sort of brownish color, cut to a very typical length. He has a rather unimaginative shade of black for his mane. His cutie mark is a stack of checks and a balance scale, which he got when he was just a colt, alongside every other foal who also found their special talents around the same time.
Average’s special talent is finance. Specifically, his job was to balance checkbooks and other accounting duties which he performed with immeasurable joy each and every day at the Detrot City Bit and Trust Bank from nine in the morning to five at night.
He spends his free time reading the newspaper, ensuring his apartment room is as neat and orderly as it could be, working on some of the accounts he manages at the bank, paying his taxes, and doing the numerous other tedious day to day activities the normal citizens of Equestria do.
Nothing more, nothing less.
Just like his entire life.
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This day in Average’s life began just like the ones before it.
With his alarm going off.
This sound, though nothing out of the ordinary to him, woke him from a deep slumber with a jolt. His eyelids fluttered half open, still heavy from sleep, and his hoof instinctively floundered towards the general vicinity of the alarm clock, which was still blaring out its much-too-chipper jingle. At first, his hoof fell just a few inches short of the clock, hitting the side table just like every morning, before he successfully managed to hit the off button the second try.
With a small groan of a pony attempting to wake up, Average Statistic forced his eyes open and stared at the barren, slightly cracking ceiling above him. It was a familiar sight to him; he looked at that ceiling every morning.
Stifling a yawn, he sat up and stretched, feeling the joints in his back and forelegs pop as he did so. He yawned again and swung his backlegs over the edge of the bed, waiting for the feeling to return to his hooves.
He sat in that position for a moment, allowing his sleep laden brain to catch up with the rest of his body. A small part of his mind almost regretted having to get out of bed that morning. Almost.
He smacked his lips and yawned for what would be the third time that morning.
There would be only two other times he would yawn that day.
He had been having a rather interesting dream, he recalled. It had involved something along the lines of him lying in a grassy meadow, staring up at the clear blue sky with a sense of elation. This was something he knew would never happen, because he was not the type to spend a day frittering about in meadows without a care in the world. There were innumerable other, more productive ways that he could spend his time than lying in a field.
With that thought, Average stood up and stumbled over to his bedroom window. Upon reaching them, he peered through the curtains and looked out over the exceedingly mediocre Detrot City skyline beyond. Throwing back the curtains, a beam of sunlight shone through the now uncovered window directly into the open eyes of Average, something that never failed to happen each day, despite the fact he aspired to make sure it didn’t.
The brown pony shielded his eyes from the blinding rays and turned away from the window, blinking rapidly. His bedroom was bathed in the sort of warm, yellowish color that one would come to expect to come from the sun. It was pleasant. He looked out over the city for a moment, admiring the view, most of which was covered in a morning fog.
Walking towards the bathroom, Average yawned for the final time that morning and absentmindedly scratched his side, still trying to oust his morning drowsiness. Once inside, he relieved himself and took a quick shower which ran out of hot water three-quarters of the way through. He would’ve preferred to stay in the shower longer than he had, even despite the cold water, but he knew he couldn’t dawdle in the morning.
Sighing to himself, Average shut off the water and shook off most of the excess water that clung to his coat before clambering out of the shower. He grabbed a towel off the counter and began the meticulous process of drying his coat, something that always took an annoyingly long time to do. Average often thought that he should maybe buy a hair dryer to speed the process, but never acted on it.
After several long minutes, Average was more-or-less dry and was running a towel through his mane one last time. He glanced up in the mirror and through the rapidly evaporating vapor, saw his reflection staring back at him. He half-heartedly grinned at himself as he inspected his face and smoothed down any wayward hairs in his coat in an attempt to make himself look halfway decent.
He looked back up at his reflection and turned on the faucet, running it until it was ice cold. The pipes in the walls squealed loudly, sounding as if they were going to burst at any second. After a moment, Average dipped a comb in the water and ran it through his mane, styling his hair. He whinnied as the frigid water trickled down his scalp; it was decisively more jarring than the cold water from the shower. He shut off the faucet.
Average, for the third time that morning, looked at the mirror and observed his general appearance. Deciding that his looks were up to his normal standards, he nodded to himself, as if approving, and left the bathroom so he could truly begin his day.
With that part of his morning routine taken care of, Average, now decisively more awake, trotted the remaining distance to his kitchen. It was almost automatic by now, his routine. Wake up, shower, breakfast, leave for work. Very little was left up to chance and he liked that.
Reaching his destination, Average scurried to the refrigerator, his hooves clacking on the tile floor of his kitchen, and opened the refrigerator door. The light inside slowly flickered on, and he peered inside, his eyes glancing over the food and drink inside. While there wasn’t a large amount of packages, bottles, and foodstuffs crammed onto the shelves of his fridge, there certainly wasn’t lack of them either.
With a groan, he reached in and drew out a carton of milk. He looked at the expiration date. Only a day after it turned. He opened the carton and sniffed it and didn’t gag at the smell. It was good enough to still eat, he figured.
Average gingerly closed the refrigerator door and set the milk on the counter behind him. He turned and stepped over to one of the cabinets and opened it. The cabinet door fell off in his hooves, clattering to the counter below and nearly smacking Average in the head had he not barely dodged it.
He snorted and shoved the door down the counter, making a mental note to fix it sometime later. He could survive without a door on his cabinet until the weekend.
Scowling, he stuck his head in the now open cabinet and scrounged around for a moment. After much effort, he pulled back, bringing out a box of cereal and a bowl clamped firmly between his teeth. He gently set the bowl on the counter, opened the box and poured the cereal in. Finishing this, he poured some milk into the bowl, successfully completing his breakfast. He hurriedly brought his meal over to his table, setting it down on the only place free of any papers or empty bottles.
He turned and went back to the kitchen and opened one of the drawers, silently praying that it wouldn’t break as well. It didn’t break and he was happy for a moment. He sifted through its contents for a few moments, looking for a spoon, but found a grand total of zero.
With a huff, he slammed the drawer shut and went over to his sink. The sink in question was piled high with plates, glasses, bowls, silverware, and who knew what else, all waiting for Average to scrub them clean and put them away. In addition to buying a hair dryer, Average also fantasized about buying an actual dishwasher, but never did. He shook his head in frustration again and snatched one of the numerous spoons from the sink and ran it under some warm water, quickly cleaning it off.
Wiping the spoon on a nearby kitchen towel, he lumbered back over to the table and sat down. He slid the bowl closer to him and filled his spoon with a helping of cereal and took a bite, chewing slowly. The milk had already begun to seep into the cereal, making it soggy, so Average chewed faster, hoping to finish before the contents of his bowl became mush.
Several minutes later, he had almost finished his breakfast when his eye caught the clock hanging on the wall next to him and he noticed that it was getting close to when he would have to leave to go to work. It was only a leisurely ten minute trot from his apartment to his work, but it never hurt to leave a bit early, just in case something went wrong.
He carried his bowl and spoon over to the sink and set them in along with the rest of the plates and glasses. He would wash them all that weekend, he hoped, and if not, he would have to start eating things without plates or bowls, like an animal.
Pushing those thoughts away, he walked back to his bedroom and opened up his closet to select one of the black, fine pressed suits hanging inside. There was a total of eight suits inside the closet; seven for every day of the week and one for when those were getting cleaned.
He slid one of the suits off of the hanger and managed to slip it on after a moment’s struggle. He stood in front of a mirror and smoothed out a few wrinkles in the fabric and completed the outfit with an adorning red bowtie.
With his clothing situation sorted out, Average gave one last look at his appearance, flattening any stray hairs and fixing anything else that needed to be. With everything taken care of, the brown earth pony went out into his apartment’s foyer and took brown saddlebags off a coatrack by the door. Normally, a coatrack would be filled with coats, but Average owned only one and kept it in the hall closet, so Average used his coatrack for his saddlebags. He took a quick glance inside to make sure everything he might need for the day was in there and strapped the bag around his back.
After fumbling with the latch, he pushed the front door open and stepped out into the hall. Taking a moment to collect his thoughts, he trotted down the hallway and to the stairwell. There were four flights of stairs to the ground floor and Average had to walk up and down them each and every time he wanted to do anything, such as going to work or going to the store.
Exiting the stairwell, Average made his way out of the building and out into the bustling Detrot streets. He paused for a moment to take a deep breath of the slightly musty air and set off down the road, intent on getting to his job.
Many of the ponies of Detrot City were also intent on going somewhere, as was common in the morning. Soon after Average began walking, he was engulfed in a crowd of ponies all going somewhere else, though that did little to deter the single-minded determinism he had for getting to work.
For six minutes, Average walked with little interruption. On one corner, as Average passed by, a destitute stallion raised a cup in his general direction, hoping for a small gift of charity that never came, much like every morning. Of course, Average was not a cruel, stingy stallion; he just paid little attention to his surroundings. If he had seen the homeless stallion, which he never did, he probably would have given him some change.
On the next block, he walked by a bakery that advertised their pastries as being the best in the city, something Average had never tested out for himself. He just never had the time to stop in and buy anything, despite the enticing smell that wafted out of the doors every morning. There were a great many things that Average wanted to do, but never did, for reasons he never quite understood himself.
It was two blocks later, that Average hit his first setback of the morning.
On the corner of Cobbleback Court and Rose Garden Boulevard, two wagons had collided, scattering merchandise and debris all over the road. Two police wagons blocked off the entire road, preventing Average or any other pony from passing through.
One of the wagons, it appeared, had been carrying sacks of flour. Ripped, half-empty sacks littered the cobblestone roads, their contents of white powder covering everything in the general vicinity.
The other wagon, however, was ablaze and was slowly crumbling into cinders and ash. One of the police ponies was attempting to smother the fire with a blanket to no avail. Lying a short distance away was a large chunk of the wagon that once belonged to its rear door. On it was a logo, barely visible through the soot, proudly advertising for Flint and Steel’s Quality Brand Matchsticks and Other Assorted Flammables.
It was a rather ironic end for the combustible cargo the wagon was carrying. Average humorously thought that, if somepony ever made a documentary about his life, this moment would probably be very memorable. He briefly allowed himself a smile, incredulously wondering about the humor that Fate would have to possess to let a matchstick wagon catch fire.
Four minutes later, Average was still standing there, waiting somewhat impatiently for the blockage to be cleared. His previous amused outlook on the situation had quickly transformed into one of anger and frustration as the time wound. He wished that the police, or even the firefighters that had recently arrived, would clear up the wreckage and let them pass through.
It was at the end of those four minutes that a team of firefighters rolled the two wagons to the side, allowing everypony to continue walking again, something everypony did with great earnest. Average was not the only pony in the crowd annoyed by the setback.
As Average passed by a clock and watch shop, cleverly titled Clocks, Watches and Timepieces, he glanced at the window display and noted that he had seven minutes until he would be late for work.
Just perfect, if nothing else went wrong.
And nothing else did go wrong.
Average arrived at the Detrot City Bit and Trust, the gleaming, white marble bank he worked at, four minutes later and strode up the steps leading into the building. Walking past the pillars that stood in the front and held up the overhanging roof, Average heaved his shoulder into the large wooden entrance and went inside.
Average’s hooves echoed with each step he took across the large and rather empty tile foyer. The tellers chatted amongst themselves behind the lengthy counter that lined the opposite side of the room, idling away the time until the bank opened in a few minutes.
Reaching the counter, Average pushed through the swinging half doors that led to the employee section of the bank. A few of his fellow workers greeted him, just as they did every morning and Average responded in kind, exchanging pleasantries with them.
After a few minutes of conversation, the other employees drifted to other things, leaving Average to go begin his own job. Average liked to do his job, and unlike his co-workers, he preferred to spend time doing it, instead of wasting time talking about trivial matters.
That is, unless he was talking to the mare that worked in the room next to him. He fancied her from afar and could talk to her for hours on end. He never told her that he liked her, of course. He was much too shy and was sure that she would never return his feelings.
An interesting thing to note here is that, contrary to Average’s opinion, the mare he liked was smitten with him as well and often found unimportant reasons to talk to Average, riding on the hope that he would ask her out.
But he never did.
Average ran into the mare in question just outside of his office. They chatted for several minutes about the weather and about the accident on Cobbleback Court, before parting ways, neither noticing the other’s feelings.
Average settled into his office with an exasperated sigh. He placed his saddlebags on his desk and slid out everything he would need for the day. With a cursory glance out his window at the brick wall of the building next to the bank, Average started on his day’s work.
He worked for several hours filing and organizing various bank accounts. Time seemed to fly by in his opinion because, before he knew it, the clock struck noon, signaling the start of a forty-five minute lunch break.
Average decided to work through lunch, turning down his co-workers’ offer of going to a restaurant. He ate his sandwich in relative silence, with the only other noise being the quiet scratching of quill on parchment and his occasional chewing.
Little did he know that, next door, the mare he liked also opted to stay behind to work through lunch. The two of them remained unaware of the other throughout the entire forty-five minutes.
Finishing his lunch, Average worked for two more hours before a stallion came storming into his little room demanding to know why all the money in his account had disappeared. After calming him down, Average found the records and told the customer that his wife had accessed the account three days prior and withdrawn everything. The client then revealed that they had recently divorced and, since she should no longer have access to his account, demanded that Average could get the money back. But, though he very much would have liked to, Average had to politely tell the stallion that he could do nothing, several times in fact, and directed the stallion to his manager.
After that incident, the rest of Average’s day went by in relative peace, and before he knew it, the sun had begun to sink through the sky, painting the horizon in a vibrant orange. Or, he guessed that the horizon was painted a vibrant orange, considering the view out of his window was of a wall. And like that, the clock hit 5:00, signaling the end of the bank’s working hours.
Silently, Average packed up his materials into his saddlebags and trotted towards the exit, nodding politely to his co-workers as he left. He shot a small, nervous smile at the mare he liked as they passed by each other in the hall, but didn’t stop to say anything to her.
He walked out of the front door at exactly 5:04 and stopped on the threshold for a moment, admiring the silhouettes of the buildings of downtown Detrot in the rapidly encroaching sunset. It was an exceptionally beautiful evening, he thought.
And then he moved on.
Taking a deep breath, the earth pony began the trudge back to his apartment through the crowded and bustling streets that were typical at this time of the day. His trip back home was much less eventful than it was leaving that morning, considering there were no overturned carriages anywhere on his route, a fact that relieved him greatly.
Average was deep in thought, lost in the nuances of his day and musings of how much more work he could accomplish had that one stallion not ranted at him for one and a half hours. He also briefly thought of the mare that worked next door, and was sad that they would never be together.
In fact, so engrossed was he in his thoughts, that he walked right by the door to his apartment building and didn’t realize it for three minutes.
It was only as he passed by an art gallery, did he realize what he had done. Turning around, he trotted back to his building and let himself in after making sure that nopony had noticed his mistake. Nopony had, of course. Nopony particularly cared either, but Average did it anyway.
He stepped into the foyer and nearly tripped over the janitor, who was vigorously scrubbing the floor just inside the doorway. After apologizing to him, Average dipped his head in acknowledgment towards the deskmare and continued towards the staircase without even stopping.
He trudged up the same four flights of stairs he descended that morning and stepped off on his floor. He never visited the three floors below him and he never visited the one floor above him; he never had any reason to.
As he neared his apartment, a sudden loud booming shook the building. Average glanced up at the ceiling, silently cursing under his breath. The young stallion in the apartment above his loved to listen to very loud, very modern music and was never afraid to show it, even though quite a few tenants complained to the building’s owner. Average secretly looked forward to the day that the landlord would kick out his upstairs neighbor.
The music stopped for a moment and Average hoped that maybe the stallion was done for the night, but the noise started up again, even louder than before, if that was at all possible. He groaned in exasperation and prepared himself for another night of thudding, incoherent noise that dared to call itself music.
Average unlocked his door and let himself in, slinging his saddle bags on the coat rack as he walked by. He staggered into the kitchen, already feeling the day’s exhaustion weigh down on his shoulders like something heavy. Almost unconsciously, he grabbed a relatively clean-looking glass from the sink and filled it with tap water. He drank it down greedily, reveling in the cold refreshment.
His thirst sated, he shuffled into his living room and collapsed unceremoniously onto his couch without even changing out of his suit and bowtie. Within minutes, and with little disregard to the deafening music from upstairs, Average fell asleep, something he rarely ever did on the weekdays.
The wall-shaking music from upstairs shut off three or so hours later, sometime around nightfall. The sudden silence jolted Average awake. He blinked twice and sat up, his eyes straining to see anything in the now pitch-black room.
He got up, frowning slightly at his wrinkled suit and crossed the room to turn on a light, which barely illuminated the room. Still a little sleepy from his nap, Average lumbered into his bedroom, undoing his suit and bowtie as he went. He threw his clothes into a hamper and, as his stomach growled loudly, figured that it was high time for some form of dinner.
Returning to the kitchen, Average, intent on making a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, discovered that he had no jelly and had to settle for only a peanut butter sandwich and another glass of water. Sitting down at the table, he ate in silence, angry with himself for falling asleep and letting the rest of his afternoon slip by.
Normally, he ate before this time of night, but his unplanned catnap had set him back a few hours. It was a shame, really, but one that couldn’t be fixed.
Taking the last bite of his sandwich, he took a sip of water and cleaned up, dumping his plate and glass in the general vicinity of the sink.
And now, with his evening all but shot, Average lounged on his couch and reread the previous day’s newspaper because he had forgotten to buy the current edition on his way home like he normally did. So, Average skimmed through articles and editorials he had already read in an attempt to pass the time.
It was an hour later that he finished reading most of the paper and wandered over to his bedroom windows. He stood there for a moment, admiring the star-filled night sky and the twinkling lights of Detrot’s buildings and nightlife. He sighed and slid the curtains back over the window, shutting out the outside world.
With nothing else to do but to go to bed, Average decided to turn in. Yawning for the final time that day, he crawled into his bed, already feeling drowsy, despite the nap he woke up from not an hour earlier. He slipped underneath the covers and laid his head down on his pillow.
For a brief moment, he felt lonely and wondered what it would be like to have somepony in his life. His mind wandered to the mare from his work, and he smiled at the memory of her and the conversation they had that morning. For a second, he entertained the notion that she, in her bedroom, was thinking the exact same thing about him, but he knew that that was a silly fantasy.
When, in fact, she was thinking that same thing about him, lamenting the fact that he was not interested in her. Of course, neither of them would act on their feelings the next day, or any other day after that.
Back in Average’s room, he turned on his side, pulling the sheets closer to him. He moved one of his hindlegs into a more comfortable position and felt the warm haze of sleep begin to overtake him and he closed his eyes.
Average Statistic slept for seven and a half hours and the world, and all the ponies and other creatures in it, went on with their lives without a second thought for the brown stallion sleeping in an ordinary apartment in a run-of-the-mill neighborhood in the city of Detrot.
And nopony would ever give a second thought for him, just a meaningless, fleeting glance if they happened to pass him on the streets, because he was nopony special, nopony important. Average was just that. Average.
The next morning, after a dreamless sleep, Average Statistic’s day began just like the countless ones before it.
It started with his alarm going off.
