I am up past midnight and I will not be setting my alarm for 5:30 am, thank you very much. I have gotten so bad at waking up this school year that I have reverted to my newsboy tricks.
When I delivered the Washington Post in my neighborhood as a senior in high school, it was critical that I not oversleep … ever. Because by George, even though I was contractually bound to deliver the paper by 9 am, if so much as a single person woke up without finding his paper on the front doorstep, I would hear about it and so would the rest of my family – every morning that I was “late” our house phone would ring endlessly all morning with angry, angry before-coffee morning voices.
To avoid irate neighbors, I would scatter alarm clocks about my bedroom all set at slightly different times, so that mornings I could be found thrashing myself awake frantically trying to silence a half dozen alram clocks. I am up to three alarm clocks now, although most nights I feel comfortable setting just two of them. And I haven’t found a need to to hide them yet. Hidden alarm clocks wrench me into too deep a level of bitter awakeness.
But tomorrow and the next fifteen mornings I sleep in!