A funny thing happened on the way to the office yesterday. I guess I was still a little tired, because I suddenly realized that I was on the wrong offramp of the freeway. I don't quite understand how that happened, since I kinda figured my car knew its way there without my help at this point. But there I was, getting off one exit too early and taking a couple of extra turns and extra minutes to get here. It stuck me as odd, and it got me thinking about other great moments in half-awake Peter history to share with you, gentle readers.
People do weird things when they're half-asleep. Wait, I've been told to own my statements, so let's try that again: I do weird things when I'm half-asleep. I've mentioned in this space before how bad my math is when I try to figure out when my alarm clock is going to go off. "Let's see, it's 2:15am, so I have 20 more minutes. Maybe I should just get up now to get a head start on the day." It's really something, and I amaze myself on almost a daily basis.
About a week ago, a strange thing happened. My alarm is set for 5:50am, but since I'm crazy, I almost always get up somewhere in the 5:40s. This is a problem on several levels, but mainly because should my alarm go off, I'll feel like I'm late because I'll have less time than I'm used to (even though that's the predetermined time I need to get up to do everything). Anyway, I opened my eyes last week, saw that it was in the 5:40s, and excitedly thought to myself, "The Shed!" Somehow, somewhere in my sleepy state, I had named the ten minutes leading up to my alarm "The Shed." I'm as clueless as you are. I told my wife, hoping she'd find some rhyme or reason to this, but no - I'm just bizarre. Naturally, I've awakened in The Shed every workday since and called it such. In fact, just this morning, I remember seeing the clock in the 5:20 range and thinking, "Ah, it's still pre-Shed." Again, I don't know where this came from but still decided to share (because I learned long ago that sharing and caring are connected). I could understand if it were called The Window, but no, it's The Shed.
People do weird things when they're half-asleep. Wait, I've been told to own my statements, so let's try that again: I do weird things when I'm half-asleep. I've mentioned in this space before how bad my math is when I try to figure out when my alarm clock is going to go off. "Let's see, it's 2:15am, so I have 20 more minutes. Maybe I should just get up now to get a head start on the day." It's really something, and I amaze myself on almost a daily basis.
About a week ago, a strange thing happened. My alarm is set for 5:50am, but since I'm crazy, I almost always get up somewhere in the 5:40s. This is a problem on several levels, but mainly because should my alarm go off, I'll feel like I'm late because I'll have less time than I'm used to (even though that's the predetermined time I need to get up to do everything). Anyway, I opened my eyes last week, saw that it was in the 5:40s, and excitedly thought to myself, "The Shed!" Somehow, somewhere in my sleepy state, I had named the ten minutes leading up to my alarm "The Shed." I'm as clueless as you are. I told my wife, hoping she'd find some rhyme or reason to this, but no - I'm just bizarre. Naturally, I've awakened in The Shed every workday since and called it such. In fact, just this morning, I remember seeing the clock in the 5:20 range and thinking, "Ah, it's still pre-Shed." Again, I don't know where this came from but still decided to share (because I learned long ago that sharing and caring are connected). I could understand if it were called The Window, but no, it's The Shed.
Moving on to more Sleepy Pete tales: Back in high school, computers were in the awkward teen stage of being able to connect through a modem online to text-based things like chat rooms but not yet anywhere near the internet we've come to know and love. Dusty, a tech guy by all accounts, was totally into this stuff. I was sleeping over there one weekend night and we thought of things to type to strangers in other states that would make us seem cool. After a few hours of this, I told him I was going to bed. "Ok," he said, "I'll wake you up at 3." "No," I told him, "let me go to sleep." "See you at 3!" he replied.
In the morning, Dusty asked if I remembered him waking me up at 3. I didn't at all, so he recounted the tale: The clock struck 3, and he proceeded to tap me repeatedly on the forehead. I sat up and confessed, "I didn't do the truck." He said, "Uh, Peter, I think you may need to go back to sleep." I then looked at him with disdain and said, "Bridge," before lying back down and falling asleep immediately. No one knows what that means (I certainly don't at least). I suggested that maybe he misunderstood me calling him a "stupid fuck" and "bitch," but he says my pronunciation was clear. Ooh, maybe I was supposed to take the truck on the bridge to The Shed...I think I'm onto something here.
Now, I don't know how much that story really counts, since I was probably at least 80% asleep still. I have no excuse for the next two though, because I was physically awake for both of them.
First, during the summer before my junior year of college, I had to get up early for my on-campus job. So one morning, I got up, shaved, showered, and brushed my teeth. I then put a quarter-size dollop of hair gel in my hand and proceeded to wipe it all over my face. Brilliant. Was I awake? Mostly, yeah. Not enough to refrain from confusing my morning steps though. A momentary lapse though, and easily forgivable.
The second was slightly more than "momentary." Senior year of high school, I wake up and hop in the shower. I get out, do all my stuff (correctly), get dressed, and head downstairs to make some coffee. As I enter the kitchen, my parents are sitting at the table playing Boggle. I stop and stare at them, very confused since my dad is normally already at work at this time and my mom should be asleep for another fifteen minutes. They stare back at me, equally confused because it's 11:45pm, and I just went to bed less than an hour ago. Yeah, my bad.
In the morning, Dusty asked if I remembered him waking me up at 3. I didn't at all, so he recounted the tale: The clock struck 3, and he proceeded to tap me repeatedly on the forehead. I sat up and confessed, "I didn't do the truck." He said, "Uh, Peter, I think you may need to go back to sleep." I then looked at him with disdain and said, "Bridge," before lying back down and falling asleep immediately. No one knows what that means (I certainly don't at least). I suggested that maybe he misunderstood me calling him a "stupid fuck" and "bitch," but he says my pronunciation was clear. Ooh, maybe I was supposed to take the truck on the bridge to The Shed...I think I'm onto something here.
Now, I don't know how much that story really counts, since I was probably at least 80% asleep still. I have no excuse for the next two though, because I was physically awake for both of them.
First, during the summer before my junior year of college, I had to get up early for my on-campus job. So one morning, I got up, shaved, showered, and brushed my teeth. I then put a quarter-size dollop of hair gel in my hand and proceeded to wipe it all over my face. Brilliant. Was I awake? Mostly, yeah. Not enough to refrain from confusing my morning steps though. A momentary lapse though, and easily forgivable.
The second was slightly more than "momentary." Senior year of high school, I wake up and hop in the shower. I get out, do all my stuff (correctly), get dressed, and head downstairs to make some coffee. As I enter the kitchen, my parents are sitting at the table playing Boggle. I stop and stare at them, very confused since my dad is normally already at work at this time and my mom should be asleep for another fifteen minutes. They stare back at me, equally confused because it's 11:45pm, and I just went to bed less than an hour ago. Yeah, my bad.
Before any of you smart asses say it: no, snoozing would not help me be more awake to start the day. These are isolated incidents, and they still fall well within the margin of error. And on that note, I have to start my real day and do my real work. Have a good Tuesday, everyone.
1 comment:
When my housemates and I FINALLY got cable at our Trigo pad soph. year we learned that we could use our cable box as an alarm clock. Set the channel, set the time, wake up to the morning news. We found this delightful but never took advantage of it, UNTIL my roommate Katie learned that Saved by the Bell is on at 4am. We decided to sleep in the living room and set the alarm for 4am so we could wake up to "When you wake up in the morning and the alarm gives out a warning..." It worked exactly as we'd planned except that I didn't wake up the whole way, instead, according to Katie I looked up, saw that SBtB was on and went, "Oh! I like this show!" and went right back to sleep.
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