No One Wants to Get Eaten by a Saber-Tooth Tiger Whilst Stumbling About in the Dark
Picture a zombie from any zombie movie you’ve ever seen. A slow, lumbering creature moaning pitifully, arms stretched outward for balance, glazed-over expression on their face. They say zombies are like this because they are dead, but I have a different theory. I think they are like this because they have to get up at 5:30AM for work.
That’s me in the mornings. Doesn’t matter what time I went to bed the night before, or how much sleep I got. I could have been asleep for days, but I’d still be a zombie if my awakening were to occur any time before noon. I’ve always been that way, and I don’t know that it will ever change. Very simply, it’s who I am.
People that are bright and cheery in the early mornings annoy me, and I’m both envious and put off at the same time. I don’t know how anyone could possibly find anything to be cheerful about with only a handful of brain cells activated. Perhaps they’re chemically altered with coffee or soda pop. Those things simply don’t work for me. Certainly, cheerfulness cannot be a normal state in the early morn. It is inhuman. Inhuman I say!
I recently agreed to take the morning shift at work. I’m fine with it, actually, because the carrot was getting my weekends off. That’s a nice thing; it makes me feel normal, in a way. In order to achieve this morning shift however, I must somehow coax my warm, comfortable, and perfectly happy self out of bed at the ungodly hour of 5:30AM. This is because I am a shower-taker and a breakfast-eater. I could probably gain another half-hour or so of blissful sleep otherwise, but my body is conditioned to food at the onset of my day, and a shower is the only thing capable of semi-waking me up. Because of the shower-taking and breakfast-eating, I lose roughly 15-20 minutes of beloved sleep. I also must spend an additional 10-15 minutes wandering about it a dazed stupor. These things are necessary to achieve the proper amount of wakefulness needed to drive to work and begin my day.
It’s not 100% peachy though, even then. My job consists of sitting in my office and answering phones, which is conducive to lots of head-nodding and eye-rubbing. Don’t misunderstand: I like my job and I’m ever grateful for the opportunity, I simply have a hard time adjusting to life before noon.
As the wise and noble Garfield (the cat) once said: “Mornings would be great if they came later in the day.” I’m a firm subscriber to this way of thinking. It’s unnatural to be awake before the sun comes up. For primitive man, it could have meant life or death. No one wants to get eaten by a saber-tooth tiger whilst stumbling about in the dark, especially before morning coffee. Take a lesson from our ancestors, and remember that more sleep is always a good thing. Oh, and if you see an unkempt creature with wrinkled clothing, messy hair, purple eye bags and a pale complexion, lumbering along with a blank expression of abject misery, it’s either Amy Winehouse, or just me, on my way to start my day.