Before any of you form some preconception
as to some steamy account here, I shall “let you down gently.” The title is
somewhat misleading (as I meant it to be J,
although germane, as we shall see. Either our mother and father were VERY sound
sleepers, or they just didn’t have the gumption to turn off the alarm every
morning (throughout our young kid years I always suspected the latter with possibly
the following exception). Tim and I have often recalled throughout the years
that EVERY morning the clock radio alarm would go off in their room and would
stay on for an HOUR or more. It would eventually start to change between a high
and higher tone, then almost squeal as if it was tiring. More often than not,
either Tim or I would finally grow irritable of hearing it after several
minutes or longer, and get up and go in their room and turn it off ourselves! I
wished I could sleep that sound at times to sleep through an obnoxious alarm
like that anywhere from 10 minutes to over an hour or more! As long as I can remember,
I was ALWAYS awake just before the alarm, or reveille (when in the military). I
would then immediately turn off the alarm not more than a “split second”
to a second or 2 after it went off.
During the last several years, I still use an alarm, however, it is
unnecessary because the cats know exactly when I have to get up for
“another W O N D E R F U L day at work. One of
them usually jumps on my face and often from the book-laden top of the
headboard shelf! That’s all fine and good, but in their uncanny ability to
exactly tell the instant I have to get up, they have yet been able to discern
the difference between a weekday WORK day, and a weekend/holiday day! Oh well,
I just get up eventually on “sleep-in days” and open a can of cat food and/or
let one or more of them out. However, if I sleep in too late in the morning, I
can once and a while hear the horses kicking the sides of their stalls to
remind me that THEY want to eat and go out too! I NEVER plan to sleep in even
after I retire and between other part time jobs, etc., because one or more of
the cats will still jump in my face very early. Our parents didn’t have cats
jumping in their faces early in the morning as far as I know or remember, but
they surely would have ignored them too.
One morning when their clock radio’s obnoxious alarm was blaring away,
we just left it emit its atrocious tone. Eventually Tim and I started to smell
something burning. Since it was so early in the summer morning, we just ignored
it, figured someone must have lit the “fire burner,” and were burning trash.
After a while, the noxious aroma started to really get to both of us, so I
finally got up to investigate its source. I figured as long as I was already
up, I may as well shut off that crummy clock radio alarm. As soon as I got into
their smoked filled room, I found the source of the smell. Right between them,
the bed mattress was smoldering and had burned a hole about 4 or 5 inches in
diameter, or maybe more! Apparently, one (or both) of them had been smoking in
bed and had fallen asleep! I guess if they could sleep through a mattress aglow
right between them (not to mention the continuing blast from the obnoxious
alarm), they were VERY SOUND sleepers! I guess I never inherited THAT
particular “talent”! As I meditate on it, it’s a good thing I didn’t! However,
I did go through a time of “seemingly” inherited “sound sleeping” when both
kids were infants and started to cry in the middle of the night. My former wife
could never understand how I could “sleep” through all that loud racket (Heh heh…). As a kid I also went through “sound
sleeping” when Uncle Ned would call upstairs on early summer mornings to jump
on a tractor for another LONG day of field work or sweet corn picking, etc. Tim always said, “You never slept.” It sure seemed that way! Most every year
as a very young kid, I would observe our father hiding Easter eggs in the dead
of night in our room. I was also listening as they hauled Christmas presents
downstairs very late at night after we were both “sound asleep.” I had insomnia my whole life as long as I
can remember. However, the older I get, that was greatly diminished! If I
hadn’t had such chronic insomnia as a kid, I probably would STILL believe in
Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny J ! The one thing I
could never “catch them at” was the Tooth Fairy (whose source of money left
under your pillow was from “dead people” as Tim and I proudly figured out). The
way it worked was that when some guy died the Tooth Fairy would appear
(invisibly of course), and take the money out of their pockets to later leave
under the pillow of front teethed-gapped kids. In later years, after I “grew up”,
I told my mother about tacitly observing the “Easter Bunny” and Santa Claus”
(who were BOTH our father, of course), I asked her about how they pulled off
the “Tooth Fairy” caper. She told me that when she “tucked us in” at night, she
slipped the coins under our pillow then. Hmmm, no wonder I never caught them in
my chronic insomnia! Oh well, so much for this story, since it’s getting late
and I’m getting VERY SLEEPY, so I’d better turn in to rest up for another
fun-filled and swell W O N D E R F
U L day at work tomorrow!!! (136
days, 16 hours, 1 minute, and 52 seconds to go)!!! Oh, one more thing before I
get too sleepy to continue. I’ll have to hurry because when I get sleepy NOW, I
really fall asleep QUICKLY! I have found the solution to instantly heal all the
diseases in the world, the answer is ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ…
