By Tom
“luna-ticklish” Waters
December
1 , 2001
If it
were up to me, the hustle and bustle of the outside world wouldn’t be
set into motion until 12 P.M. Morning people not only impose upon
my grumpy AM stupor, but, because they make up the majority, they run
things. If they aren’t shoveling concentrated bran flakes, slamming
carrot juice, and watching a morning show with the intellectual content
of glue paste, they’re jogging, stirring up a flurry of pre-work activity,
or taking part in some other odd morning ritual. I am an alien
in the realm of morning consciousness, and, due to classes, I’m just
going to have to learn how to bob and weave away from the sun-up stooges
who control this time frame in order to avoid casualties and unexpected
prison confinement.
Now everyone has a four
or five hour pocket of time in their day where they are at their peak
performance; fully awake, alert, and content. 10 P.M. to 2 or
3 in the morning is mine. That’s the cards that were dealt to
me, so I’ll just have to deal with them. Around that time, I’m
happy, peppy, and productive. After trial and error, this seems
to be my best writing pocket, temporally speaking. The rest of
the day, I shuffle about groggily, fueling and refueling my frame with
caffeine and nicotine (this writer’s two staples of psuedo-sentience).
I prefer being awake in the evening because I can go out and party with
friends, spend some quiet me-time alone reading, or composing
another Perdue /Pulitzer prize-winner in the sanctity of my hobbit-hole.
I don’t bother anyone. I soft-shoe through my house, trying not
to wake anybody, if just for the sake of common courtesy.
Morning people have to get
right in your face, though. They can’t be happy that they’re running
things, they have to annoy the bejesus out of their arch-nemesis as
well. As soon as they get up, it begins. My parents are
both morning people. Mom thumps down the stairs at quarter to
seven and starts the coffee maker. Coffee drinking should be the
tip-off to spotting a morning person. They like their coffee,
oh yes. Then she proceeds to turn on every home appliance in the
household. Clothes-dryers, dish-washers, ceiling-fans, furnaces,
garage door openers, and cat-recyclers all start roaring with the hydraulic
zoom of activity. In the meantime, my father is out of his room
and kick starting his razor (a 1940 model that can’t be much louder
than the cat recycler). When he’s in a good mood, he’ll take his
shower, watch the birds out the back window, and trot off to work.
But if he gets up on the wrong side of the cave, he’ll bunny hop down
the stairs, bang on the door, and bellow “ARE YOU UP YET? ARE
YOU GONNA SLEEP IN ALL DAY OR WHAT?” Yet another observation I’ve
uncovered concerning these strange fore-noon freaks. Morning people
like to mess with others if they’re in a bad mood rather than just be
miserable.
If I’ve still managed to
stay asleep, my mom will bellow down the stairs to get up. If I’m not
up a couple nanoseconds after she hollers, she trots down the stairs,
turns on every light in my room, and nags me in that special nagging
voice only mothers have: “Get up, Thom-as, time for school.” While
the morning-morons have their grape-nuts, banana, and coffee, I empty
the flat, flavorless cola leftover from the previous evening’s events
into anything that will hold fluid and stumble outside with an unlit
cigarette jutting from my lips. I usually sit in the back yard
so that I don’t have to exchange friendly salutations to the joggers
and dog-walkers full of zest and verve as they swivel their hermetically
spandexed pelvises down the street. As a rule, I’m too crotchety
to speak to anyone for the first half-hour of consciousness if I get
up before noon. Again, I’m not bothering anybody, just drinking
some carbonated life-blood, smoking my Camel, and eating what assorted
lung-flakes I produce. Dad takes this as a cue to come out
and exchange witty banter with me while he feeds the birds:
“How’s it going today, fuzz-top?”
“Get the hell away from me.”
I go inside and prepare my
breakfast (anything easily accessible with no nutritional value that
can be shoveled into the mouth), hoping that no one else in the house
will antagonize me. My little brother bounces up and down in his
chair, already visibly buzzed from his two or three bowls of Cocoa Blasts.
“What’s the square root of a hypotenuse, Tom?” He always asks
me complex questions right after I wake up. “Leave me alone, Dave,
before we find out what color that spoon changes when I stick it up
your.... (you get the picture)” Then, after he leaves, my mother
interrogates me while she mills about in the kitchen putting away hot
crockery from the dishwasher. “So how’s your boss’ pet iguana
doing?” she’ll start in, hoping to move on to the meat of her agenda.
“I’m still asleep, don’t talk to me.” After everyone is gone,
I try to go back to sleep for a few minutes (with the sedate sounds
of morning talk shows to aid me) thinking foolishly that I’ll gather
the reserve of A.M. energy that morning people seem to have, but fail
miserably and end up grumpier because of it. So I swagger out
the door and to my car, and in my stupor, slam a limb in the door. This
leads to my first bout of cursing for the day (an often occurrence when
I get up early). While most of the Active Morons are receiving
Nazi instructions from their lord and master, Rush Lim-blah, I tune
into Stern (his cynical depression is just the thing to hear when I’m
not quite shuffling with a full deck yet).
I flick a lit cigarette
at one of the ante-meridian clones walking into the donut-shop (that’s
where they congregate, in case you didn’t know the location of their
headquarters) and park at a convenient mart to seek out another carbonated
catheter. I have to wait in line behind some pre-afternoon clown
cracking jokes and envision how funny he’d be with that newspaper of
his protruding from his nose (a lot funnier, actually). Yeah,
they like their newspapers all right. After close inspection,
I’ve noticed that the morning edition has some sort of Morse code on
the ends of each page. I presume that this contains daily tips
on keeping us in the dark (pun without trying) about their covert operations.
After paying for my outrageously expensive industrial drum fountain
drink, I slink back into my yuppie-mobile where I can fork out the crusts
in my eyes and fluff out the waffle of hair on one side of my head.
We evening peoples are known to display those traits around the ass-crack
of dawn.
Yeah, you morning people
may have your fancy coffee -n- donut shops, your banal traffic reports,
and your morning paper, but I’m onto your little game. Evening
folks aren’t quite as gullible as you think. When you go to bed
at seven P.M. with your mamsy pansy slippers, glass of warm milk, and
flowery robes, think about how we’re up standing vigil over the world
and plotting your messy overthrow. We bay at the moon, drink our
evening elixirs, and watch our evening talk-shows. You try and
sleep while I’m out taking my da ily two A.M. bike ride past your house.
The difference between an early bird and a night-owl is essentially
the difference between light and dark. Morning people are mercurially
happy, whistling through their days, while evening folks have a dark,
dangerous, unpredictable air about them. If the other side would
keep their distance, I could learn to live among them. In the
time being, though, I hope the early bird spits up a worm sometime later
in the day.
