Monday, March 06, 2006

You just might be a bedneck

Jeff Foxworthy has a famous comedy bit in which he suggests that, as a method for keeping Jehovah’s Witnesses from knocking on your door and waking you up on a weekend morning, you should draw a chalk outline of a body on your front porch, and then sprinkle some religious leaflets around it.

After you have done this, he declares, “You can sleep ‘til noon if y’ount to.”

That punch line always grabbed me, because until very recently in my life, sleeping ‘til noon meant getting up early, at least on days with no work or school. Noon is just an awfully early time for a joke about waking up late. Most teenagers would probably identify better with, “You can sleep ‘til Mom gets home from work and drops her purse on your head.”

One summer evening many years ago, when my parents had some friends over for dinner on a Friday night, my mom’s friend Barbara asked me what time I’d gotten up that day.

“It was definitely before three o’clock,” I told her. I knew this because Mom used to get home from work around 3:30, and if I hadn’t showered and eaten breakfast by then, our house was like a scene from the show “24” that ends with Jack Bauer covered in soot and pieces of people.

Barbara stared at me in disbelief. “Don’t you have to go to the bathroom? Even if I wanted to sleep past ten, my bladder wouldn’t let me.”

She had a point. Only someone with the holding capacity of an oil tanker could sleep too far past noon without a pit stop. It’s more like sleep ‘til noon, nap ‘til three.

But those days are long gone. Mr. Foxworthy was actually right on the money, because once you’re an adult, noon becomes an impossibly late time to start the day, especially if you’re married to my wife Kara.

Incidentally, I know that I’m an adult now because when I was eating a bowl of cereal for dinner the other night, I actually had the thought: “These Lucky Charms just have too many marshmallows in them.” A kid would never think something like that. Also, I have to shave my back occasionally. Kids don’t do that, either.

Anyway, Kara has one of those internal clocks that I have always lacked. It tells her to wake up at a respectable time on a Saturday, even though the sun has barely been up for five hours.
“Baby, it’s time to get up,” she says, nudging me on the shoulder.

I squint one eye open, reach out and poke her on the forehead.

“Hey, what was that for?” she asks.

“I’m hitting the snooze button,” I reply.

But that approach never works for very long. Once Kara’s awake, it’s only a matter of time before the Grumblebunny attacks. The Grumblebunny is Kara’s alter ego; he comes out of his hole when she hasn’t been fed. The only way to make the Grumblebunny go back into his hole is to find something to eat, pronto. I actually have my own inner-Grumblebunny as well, but Kara doesn’t feel the need to assign nicknames to my moods so that she can safely make fun of them.

“What are we gonna eat?” she asks me. By this point, she’s been reading for two hours, and the Grumblebunny has been inching out of his hole the entire time.

“I think we still have milk. Let’s just have some cereal.”

“I don’t want cereal. We just had that for dinner. I want something good.”

So we wander into the kitchen and take stock of the fridge.

“OK, all we have is beer, ketchup, a mushy cucumber and an egg. Want me to whip up an omelette?” I ask.

The Grumblebunny requests pepperoni and black olives on the pizza that I’m about to order.

If you send Mike Todd an email at cox1013@hotmail.com, you just might be a bedneck.

9 comments:

  1. You, me, Grumblebunny and MiseryMouse should double date some time.

    Sorry Sandra, still luv ya loads it's just I know what he means :-P

    Hang on - I forgot. Sandra doesn't read blogs. Maybe here is a good time to vent even more.

    Nah, too risky.

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  2. *sigh* For about three years, hubby made the coffee while I ordered the pizza... every day at noon. Those were the days, my friend!

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  3. lol - very funny post. If we sleep until 9am , we are all screaming the rest of the day how we 'slept the day away'. It's amazing how much you can get done while the rest of the world snoozes away. Except for those Grumblebunnies....there's no denying them....they rule!

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  4. You want to know another way to cure sleeping in? Have children. Oh, sure, they're impossible to get up on school days, but once Saturday comes, they are up before the sun. Problem solved.....

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  5. I swear, I could sleep ALL DAY LONG if only the phone wouldn't ring, the dogs didn't jump on my face to tell me they need letting out, the doorbell would be quiet, and oh yeah, that pesky job thing I have. It all really puts a damper on my "sleeping in". Hmph.

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  6. Oh, honey, wouldn't it be easier just to get that back hair permanently zapped off? Then U would never have to worry about shaving it again. How does that work, anyway? I have a hard time even washing my back ... wait, did I just admit that?

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  7. I used to sleep till all hours of the day when I was a youngster... but now I have this alarm clock that stands on my bladder and licks my face every morning at 6:30 am... promptly... he won't take 'no' for an answer. I have, however, figured out that if I take him out in my pj's, I can quickly run back inside and jump into bed for a few hours of extra shut-eye! I luvs me some sleep! I luvs even more the fact that no one buys insurance before 10am!!!!! Yay me!!!!

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  8. P.S. I'm referring to my dog in the above comment, in case anyone's wondering! LOL

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  9. Oh how I long to sleep until noon! Do you think kids have a snooze button? That would rock.

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