Ode to the Snooze Button

"I am not a morning person" is not a terribly original sentiment. Garfield has been expressing it for going on, what, twenty-seven books now? Its lack of originality, however, does not make it any less true. Let me state for the record, unequivocally, that probably the worst moment of every day of my life is the one when I wake up and have to get out of bed. (This does not include actual horrible real-life moments that drop in every now and then. For instance, on the day in 1993 when meat-head football player Brian Miller backed his jacked-up muscle car into my yellow Volkswagen Thing, waking up was only the second worst moment. But not by much.)

There are a number of dimensions to waking up, each with its own set of painful elements. The first is my excessive, rabid, fanatical love of the snooze button. I have, on more than one occasion, snoozed for over three hours. That is a staggering amount of laziness, but it stems from not only my extreme dislike of waking up, but my devoted love of going back to sleep. There are few subtle pleasures in life more lovely than the thirty seconds after hitting that snooze button. I lie cocooned in the covers, perfectly warm, without need to consider any of the material facts of my life, waiting patiently for the bliss of darkness and peace to overtake me for another ten minutes. And another ten minutes. And maybe ten more minutes after that. Some people make use of transcendental meditation or yoga or shiatsu massage to center themselves and bring about a soul-cleansing sense of peace and beauty. Me, I snooze.

There is also, of course, the fact that hitting the snooze button delays the moment when I have to be awake. This is not to say that I fear the world or hate my life or want to stay in bed all day. I clearly do not. But for some reason, God designed my body to embrace the world and love my life at a time beginning approximately two hours after it leaves consciousness behind. I wish there were some choice about any of this, but there is not. It is as genetic as being left-handed, I'm pretty sure, although it comes without the constant feeling of marginalized inadequacy that that condition must surely engender. (Zing! Man, picking on lefties is as easy as picking on Canada. Or maybe I'm just jealous. Wait, no, I'm not. Weirdos.) I have done repeated experiments on the pain of being conscious, and it does not matter if I'm awakening from a luxuriant eleven hour slumber or a panicked, "Oh crud this paper is due tomorrow morning" 4 a.m. to 6 a.m. catnap of terror. It physically hurts to wake up. I don't want to open my eyes, so they remain mostly closed, slitted lids begrudgingly taking in the foggy universe. My brain is borderline non-functional, which is good because it dims the pain but bad because sometimes you have to do important things in the morning, like shave or make breakfast or go downstairs and warm up your girlfriend's car. It is nothing short of a shining testament to the sheer power of luck and the grace of God that I have not cut off my nose with a nine-bladed razor, slathered my English muffin with wasabi salad dressing, or somehow set my girlfriend's car on fire. There have been mornings when I have gone to do one of my very few morning tasks, only to find that I had already done that task thirty seconds ago. So the pain plus the overall incompetence is a strong motivator for the snooze button.

Additionally (yes, we're waaaay over ten minutes of writing here), my brain's favorite thing to do after it wakes up and moves around the world is to go back to sleep as soon as possible, regardless of what the body is doing at the moment. In college, the earliest classes started at 8:30 a.m. I often actually went to most of my 8:30 classes (My roommate may dispute this), but I almost never stayed awake through them, regardless of subject or teacher. If Jolly Jim Davis and his energizing discussions of British Literature couldn't prevent a relentless need for my forehead and desktop to be good friends, then there are very few things that could. Roller coasters, maybe. Since college, I have discovered the wonders of coffee, a heaven-sent substance that has probably saved my life as well as the lives of whatever wildlife might be inhabiting the highway medians and drainage culverts between here and Illinois. Coffee helps, but it still does not curb my emotional desire or physical ability to go back to sleep. For instance, at this very moment, I am working on six hours of sleep (not bad) and one large mug of coffee (about three cups), and I could, without hesitation, go lay down on the couch and take a two hour nap.

Although this has not worked exactly well in the past, I would like now to solicit opinions and input from the morning persons out there. See, aesthetically and conceptually, I like the morning. I really do. Sunrises are quite inspirational, the dew on the grass is always beautiful, and the general peace and bird-chirpingness of the early a.m. is lovely. I know this to be the case because I have stayed up all night on numerous occasions in the past. I have also seen these things from the traditional vantage point of having just awakened, but I was too angry and deranged to appreciate any of them.

What is it like to be a morning person?