 |
||||
| Rude Awakening Trying to Get Up in the Morning Can Be Downright Alarming. |
||||
I wish it were so for me. I'd love to wake up like that. But to be honest, I greet the morning light with all the enthusiasm of Dracula with a hangover. Rather than throwing back the curtains to welcome the day, I roll over and cover my head with my pillow, turning myself into a sort of human ravioli. And I don't spring out of bed. Upon waking up in the morning my first impulse is not to get up, but to get more down. I flatten my body so that I can get as close to the earth's core as possible--I want to touch gravity. Even when I do want to get up, my body sometimes refuses to cooperate. The spirit is willing, but the flesh, at 6:30 in the morning, isn't even on speaking terms with the spirit. Once I tried getting up "hokey pokey'' style--one limb at a time. First I got my right arm up, then my left arm. Then I got my right leg up, then my left leg. I abandoned this strategy when I realized that if I got my whole self up I would be levitating. Sometimes I'll grope around for the remote control and flip on the Today show. Bleary-eyed, I'll try to focus on the big round blur on the screen. It's Willard Scott in battle fatigues holding up a picture of a woman who's 116 years old (who's probably already up). This isn't much help. The problem is that Willard is so surrealistically dream-like, that watching him is more like being asleep than sleep itself. If tv doesn't rouse me into a fully-conscious state, next I'll try a shower. Although taking a shower always conjures up images of those people in the tv commercials who seem to shower in a state of ecstasy, generating enough lather to put out a small oil well fire, it never seems to work out that way for me. More likely, I'll stagger to the bathroom and get in the shower while I'm still half asleep. This can be dangerous. Once I turned on the water and discovered--quickly and painfully--that I'd left the shower massage on high. There's nothing like starting the day by having a geyser perform "Babbalu'' on your eyeballs. And, inevitably, while I'm in the shower, someone else in my apartment building will turn on their hot water, causing my water to change to a temperature cold enough to give me goosebumps the size of grapefruits. So, rather than emerge from the shower alert and refreshed, I often come out shaken, stunned--and still sleepy. If a shower fails to do the trick, there's always breakfast. I don't know about you, but I grew up watching reruns of the Donna Reed Show where the family gathers around the table each morning for a breakfast prepared by Donna consisting of an impressive display of eggs, bacon, grapefruit, cereal, sausage, . . . basically every breakfast item known to man. All this and Donna hasn't even broken a sweat. This is a myth. When I was growing up, we didn't have time for that. For me, breakfast usually consisted of a blueberry muffin lobbed to me grenade-style by my mother as I was running out the door. I suppose the closest thing to a Donna Reed breakfast I've ever had is the all-you-can-eat breakfast bar that some restaurants offer, and this presents a different set of problems for me. I'm just not sure that man was meant to eat his weight in bacon. And I've learned that at an all-you-can-eat bar I will eat all that I can eat. But the real problem I have is that, while I'm eating, my mind is not on the plate of food I have, but the one I'm going to get. This is usually accompanied by the uncomfortable knowledge that there are people over at the breakfast bar getting "my" food. It becomes a territorial thing. I'm half-surprised I don't thump my chest with my fists and let out howls to scare them away. For me, the breakfast bar concept turns an ordinary breakfast experience into Gorillas in the Grits. No, my eating habits in the morning are far more spartan. I'll look around the refrigerator and make a selection from the variety of containers--often of indeterminate vintage. (One time I found a carton of yogurt with an expiration date marked B.C.--a bad sign. When I pried off the lid, my worst fears were confirmed--many have qualms about wearing fur these days, but apparently my carton of yogurt was not among them.) Or I'll check the pantry for something quick and easy to make, like Pop-Tarts. Once, to save time, I bypassed the toaster and cooked a Pop-Tart in the microwave oven. Big mistake. I noticed--too late--that on the box it said "Do Not Microwave.'' I quickly found out why. When I opened the door, I discovered that the microwave seemed to have altered the genetic structure of the tart, causing it to explode and the filling to crystallize. It looked not so much like a breakfast pastry as a strawberry geode. So my breakfast selections--far from appetizing--are not quite what it takes to wake me up. Of course, you're probably wondering why I'm ignoring the most obvious solution: coffee. Well, for all the hoopla about coffee's rejuvenating properties, it just doesn't have any effect on me. Don't get me wrong. I like coffee. I drink it every morning and I even drink the coffee at work, which has the look and consistency of the contents of Wayne Newton's lava lamp. But the fact is, coffee just doesn't wake me up. Wait, come to think of it, I take that back. One morning I zipped by the Burger King take-out window in my usual drowsy state and ordered a cup of coffee. On my way out, I hit a speed bump and spilled the entire cup in my lap. I have to admit that it indeed woke me up. But I'd sure hate to do that every morning. Illustration by Barry Willis |
||||
