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Blogs by Robert Gomez
Hey You... Leave Me Alone! 3/9/2008 10:37:23 AM
If I go to bed at 11:00 P.M. and wake up at 8:00 A.M I am cranky. If I go to bed at 2:00 A.M. and wake up at 11:00 A.M I am cranky. When I go to bed at 8:00 P.M. and don’t wake up until noon the next day, I am still one of the top ten most cantankerous people in the county, I am sure. Truth be told, I am not really a morning person. Nothing really needs to go wrong for me after I wake up to cause a little irritability. But of course, nothing ever works out that way. See, life can be described as salt while I am the wound. I trust that two and two can be put together.
It should be expected that some things will go less than perfectly in a given day. When I wake up on a certain day, it may be a little chilly for my liking, but I am not going to throw a temper tantrum over three degrees Fahrenheit. I also have the ability to shrug it off when one of the corners of my pop-tart, which is serving as my breakfast that day, crumbles off upon my finger touching it. But there is one thing that I just cannot stand. It is the vilest thing that can happen to a non-morning person in the morning: An encounter with and early-riser.
It is more than possible that I may be acting a little on the sensitive side and that I am simply berating those who are different from me. People overact to just about anything, myself included. Hell, at one point a law was passed forcing many famous bands, Pink Floyd, for example, to put warning labels on records with possible backmasking, just because some people that it could have been related to Satan. Maybe I am just letting some small, insignificant aspect of life bother me much more than it should. It isn’t their fault that they are able to bustle in the ante meridiem. Be that as it may, it is not my fault, either, that I am comatose at cockcrow.
You see, there is this thing called a Period Three Gene that effects how long it takes for a person to become completely alert and awake in the morning. Should a person have a longer Period Three Gene, their ability to do so does not take as long as it does for a person with a shorter Period Three Gene. Nothing is being held against those who have been blessed with a longer one of these genes. However, it should be known that many people have been born with a short Period Three Gene. Although I have never been formally tested, I am pretty sure that my Period Three Gene length would be considered on the smaller side.
It is not impossible for me to wake up in the morning; it just takes me a little while to do so. If I am allowed to wake up at my own pace, the task can be completed without much struggle. Unfortunately, as I am fervently trying to stimulate myself into entering maximum consciousness, there is always at least one person whom I alight upon who has already reached that state, and he is going to make sure I know it.
First, it is the bombardment of friendly greetings. “Hello! Good Morning! How are you? What did you have for breakfast? Did you see Conan last night? Wanna go running with me? How about a trip to Cabo?” As much as I would love to indulge in this very vivacious person’s request to complete his list of “Things to do before I die”, in the morning, I am much more inclined to pass. In fact, I would most like to throw my breakfast at him while he is running so he would trip and get a nimiety of lacerations. But that is socially unacceptable so I instead choose to roll my eyes, yawn, and muster up the energy to say, “Hey.” It is simple. It doesn’t really answer any of his questions. And the lack of thoughtfulness that went into my response shows that I am disregarding every single thing he had just said to me, making him think that I do not care for him in the least. Indeed at that very moment in time, I do not care for him in the least. All I care about is trying to wake up at my own leisurely rate.
If I were to blow off a person any other time of the day, just like I did with the example given in the previous paragraph, it would be safe to say that I would turn that very same person off to me. He would get the hint that I have no interest in communicating with him and he would leave me alone from there on out. But the morning is like an alternate universe. Nothing is like it should be. After my austere, yet insightful, “Hey,” I do not get berated for my inconsideration, but rather, I get the privilege to be this person’s sole target for the remainder of his morning conversation.
I am told a story of how awful the water pressure was in his shower that morning. He goes on and on about how it normally has such a forceful stream and that today’s just wasn’t up to snuff. To be perfectly honest, I agree with him. It is valid to complain about not having firm water pressure, especially when it is normally very tenacious and then one day, just out of the blue, it is flaccid. Much like how you can’t play fetch without Fido, you can’t have a productive shower without hardy water pressure. If he had told me this any other time of the day, I would have gladly agreed to join him in his own little rant against a drooping shower stream, but he doesn’t, so I don’t.
Eventually, I become the waking version of myself, with no gratitude going to the person with the longer Period Three Gene. But that little run-in with the morning person adversely affects the rest of my day. I am not angry everyday; just the days when I am not allowed to wake my own self up. I understand that some people just have an easier time waking up in the morning, but they shouldn’t use that as an excuse to pester the less-aroused. I simply cannot help the fact that I find it difficult to come out of sleep-mode every single morning; I was born with a shorter Period Three Gene. It is like an illness, or a disorder, if you will. No one ever goes up to a person with epilepsy while they are having a seizure and says, “Hey! How’s it goin’? Feel like climbing Everest with me? Have you listened to The Dark Side of The Moon? Read any good books lately? I just rented Battlefield Earth!” People who don’t have epilepsy know that people with epilepsy need to have their seizures from time to time; it is what their disorder causes them to do. Going by the same philosophy, morning people should respect the time that people with shorter Period Three Genes need in order to become fully awake.
This is directed to every single man, woman, and child who is cognizant, captivated, and content in the morning: We don’t need to hear your diction. We don’t need to be consoled. Hey preacher, leave us tired folk alone. All in all it’s just another kick in the balls.
