Listening to This girl's In Love With You as sung by Dusty Springfield

If there was one part of the human experience that I detest the most it would have to be waking up. I have never liked it. I have never been good at it. Once. Once I was good at it. And it is a morning I will always remember. I was a senior in high school. It was spring. I had ate at a hole in the wall Italian eatery called "Bove's" in Burlinton, VT (where I am from) the night before. This morning I woke up a minute before my alarm went off, my eyes wide open, I sat up, popped out of bed, practically leapt into my shower and had one of the most energy filled days of my life. Now, if any of you know me, you know that I am not a very low energy type of guy. Unless you knew me in January/February of 2005 -right, Shannon? It was amazing.
However. most days in high school consisted of this - alarm going off, me stumbling down the hallway to the bathroom, leaning against the wall in the shower while 95 triple x blared from our little shower radio, probably something reprehensible at 6:15 in the morning - EMF's Unbelievable or something - while I thoughtlessly washed my hair and soaped my numb body. Then, stepping onto a freezing cold tile floor masked by an extremely thin rug, I would wrap myself in two towels and sit on the closed top of my toilet until I could muster the energy to get up and get dressed.
Nowadays I wake up and I feel puffy-faced and lost. If you have heard me describe myself when I have just woke up (especially if I am hung over) I almost always say "I feel like I peeled my face off a griddle." Which is exactly how I feel physiologically. Do you have any young cousins? Did they ever sleep over your house when you were growing up? My cousins would sleep over then, as my niece and nephew do now. When you go in to their room to check on them and they are in their pj's do you ever notice how sweaty they are? Sometimes their heads are great big balls of sweat. You pull down their blanket until they just have a sheet lying on them, make sure their favorite stuffed animal is nearby, check the night light and leave the door open a crack. Sometimes I feel like I need someone like that to help me sleep better.
Do you want to know something weird? From a really young age until I was about 8 or 9 my dad would come into my room when he got home from work and hop into bed with me. You see, my Dad would leave home at about 6 am and get home at about 9pm or 10pm seven days a week so we saw each other very rarely. I recognize that this is an extremely personal part of my childhood, and one that I have really never told anyone about, but I think it is okay to mention it. He would lie down on my bed and squeeze men and rub his day's stubble on my face and ask me how my day was. I, always sleepy would just giggle and tell him to stop. Of course, as I got older, I became more annoyed by this habit and by the time I was in 3rd or 4th grade he eventually stopped. I remember being really over-sensitize to the whole thing after we had to take a molestation awareness class or some shit. However, now I can kind of see where he was coming from. When I see my niece and nephew I want to squeeze the piss out of them. Of course, they don't want to be hugged and kissed all the time. they want to play with their toys and run around, etc. If I had my own kids and I didn't get to see them all day, especially my youngest, I would want to spend a little time with them too. That's all my Dad was doing.
It's funny how a little bit of life can shed some light on those strange childhood moments. I guess I better get my ass out of bed and get to work. Again.