Tuesday, February 26, 2008

You Are Getting Veeeeery Sleepy!


There have been times in my life when I have been seriously sleep deprived and then when I do fall asleep, there isn't a thing on this earth that could wake me. I've slept through birthday parties, I've had conversations with roommates in my sleep that I can't recall later, and I've even fallen asleep at the keyboard and started typing a dream I was having. However, I usually know when these situations are coming because days with no sleep precede them. I thought I was doing pretty good with my 6-7 hours a night until I woke up this morning and realized that I woke up on my own, with no alarm (mark this on your calendar people!), and the sun was shining through my bedroom window. I lay there for a second and thought to myself, "Huh, the sun is up but my alarm didn't go off yet." (it usually goes off when it is still dark out) Then I looked at my alarm clock and it said 9:19. I just stared at it and thought over and over, "9:19...9:19...9:19" Now, for all of you regular working people out there, this isn't really oversleeping. For me, by 9:19, I have already seen two classes and am in the middle of reading with a small group of first graders. Okay, so here I was, "9:19...that can't be right...why didn't anyone call me to see where I was? Hasn't anyone missed me yet? Maybe I should call the school and just say that I'm sick...then I could take the whole day off. Wait! 9:19! That means that I overslept for two and a half hours! How on earth am I going to explain this?"


Okay, sidenote: When I was in high school, I used to wake up in the middle of the night and see that it was 3:15am or some outrageous hour like that and for some strange reason, I was terrified that it wasn't true. So then I would proceed to get up and walk around the house and check at least 3 other clocks to make sure that my alarm clock showed the correct time and to reassure myself that I had not inadvertently reset the time in my sleep. It took me a little while to get over the "My Alarm Clock Is Lying To Me" phase, but I did and now my alarm clock and I are well adjusted to each other.


So as I am laying in bed trying to grasp on to the fact that I should be a fourth of the way through my day by now, I grab my phone and flip it open to look at the time. It says 7:19. "Now that's more like it!" Is this enough for me? No. In my groggy state, it is completely rational to me that I would be more likely to reset the time on my phone in my sleep than to reset the time on my alarm clock in my sleep. I don't even know how to reset the time on my phone when I am fully awake! So, I have to get up and check the time on 2 more clocks just to make sure that my phone isn't lying to me, because why would my dear sweet alarm clock lie to me? It's done nothing but tell me the truth over the past 10 years! Well, that and wake me up every morning for which it gets a sound beating (which is a whole other story in and of itself). Hmmm...maybe it's retaliating.


Anyways, so I got ready and sped off to work and made it there by 8:01. Phew! But now, I need to go have a little talk with my alarm clock...

6 comments:

Alison said...

That is the worst feeling in the world, waking up and thinking you're late. This year I woke up at 8:15 A.M. on THE SECOND DAY OF SCHOOL(!), and nearly had a cow. (I have a conference first thing in the morning--only thing that saved me.) It sucked. I'm glad it worked out today for you, however. Praise be to the phone and your internal clock for saving you!

Erica said...

I used to literally not go to sleep at night as a kid because my alarm was so loud that it caused me to have heart palpitations if it went off. I stayed up so I could turn it off the moment before Defcon 1. When I was old enough to buy my own alarm I went out and immediately got one that woke you up to the radio and started sleeping so much better.

Now I just have to deal with having my blackberry being smarter than me and having it not go off on the weekends etc unless I change settings.

WhiteEyebrows said...

there's no worse way to wake up than in a panic like that... I hate it!

Tamara said...

Is it wrong that I actually take comfort in knowing that someone else has jumped out of bed at odd hours to check clocks in other rooms because they didn't believe their alarm clock or their phone? All this time I thought I was the only one!

Amber said...

I think it needs another sound beating!

drfindley said...

So aside from the obvious need to panic and a suppressed need to cuss about waking up late, I noticed a little jem in there about you typing in your sleep. For some people, this is what they live for. No really it is. See here:

http://blag.xkcd.com/2007/05/28/tools-for-dream-typing/

And then here:
http://xkcd.com/269/