I’ve never really been much of a morning person.

Never ever!

In fact, even on Christmas morning itself, undisputedly the happiest morning for children ages 3 – 14 the world over, I was never one of those kids who would be pulling at their parents’ bed sheets at 6am begging them to get up so that they could open presents.  Sure, I definitely tiptoed out to the living room to sneak a peek at the loot and possibly even shake a few boxes on many an occasion, but once I got that first glimpse I was pretty much good until everyone else arose a few hours later and I was re-awoken by the sounds of Christmas music coming from the living room.

Later on when my little sister all but demanded an early rise, I’m not ashamed to admit that after getting up and opening presents with everyone else, it wasn’t exactly uncommon for me to pile all of my new, unwrapped toys back under the tree and then go take a nap before actually playing with them!

What can I say?!  Yeah, I was kind of a weird kid, but nowadays I’m proud to say that despite all of this crazy growing up that progression into adulthood forces upon us, if there’s one thing that I’ve been able to preserve over the years, it’s that unprecedented passion for sleeping in which I continue to enjoy on a daily basis even as of this very morning!  As far as I’m concerned, there’s no better way to jump start your day than by sleeping through a significant portion of it. I mean, sure, they say that “it’s the early bird that gets the worm” and all, but really … who wants to eat worms for breakfast, anyways?!

Not this lazy lover of long-term lounging, that’s for sure, and it’s for that reason and countless dream-filled others that I, for one, have gone to great lengths to ensure that my coveted catnaps are never compromised by the dastardly alarm clock that lurks near my bed, ever threatening to jerk me back into reality from my slumber without a single ounce of compassion for the fact that more likely than not I probably just laid down a couple of hours ago to begin with!

The thing is, anyone with half a hangover can train themselves to hit the snooze button within a fraction of a second of that dream-shattering alarm going off, but yours truly has taken it a step further by evolving my very subconscious to be on the lookout for sleep disturbances proactively on my behalf, and thus it’s not entirely uncommon for me to wake up in the morning (-ish?) to find that the alarm that I had previously set before retiring the night before has miraculously been completely shut off in the middle of the night, long before it ever even had a chance to go off and possibly do long-term damage by somehow causing me to actually be on-time for things or something!  No snooze, no 35 seconds of obnoxious morning radio while I fumble to find said snooze button … just good, old-fashioned apathetic bliss as the morning hours drift on by without so much as a whisper…

Now as far as how I actually gained this wonderful wakeup ward?  Believe me, I’d love to know so that I could share it with the world … I figure the more people that sleep in, eventually McDonald’s is going to have to move their breakfast hours back past that ridiculous 10:30am cut-off that they try to get away with these days!  Seriously, the amount of extra money that they’d make just selling McGriddles to me alone would more than pay for the new signs and a dedicated griddlemaster for stores all around the country!

Oh, I promise you that you’ll be the first to hear about it if I ever figure out how to unlock the secrets to this sleepy subconscious of mine, but until that day is near, my best advice is simply to make do the best with what you’ve got – randomly “bump” the radio dial to see if it falls to a station that doesn’t actually exist, “accidentally” drop a hand towel over the display so that you can’t make out the numbers anymore, take up “sleep walking” and relocate the thing to the refrigerator out in the other room – do whatever it takes, and someday you too can be victorious over that most sinister home appliance of them all…

…the alarm clock.