From Chapter ONE

How do you start your morning? I start mine in grueling agony, which I think is good to a certain extent. Morning-people scare me. Man was not designed to wake up at dawn, and I don't care what any doctor tells you. "Early to bed and early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise"? Well, I've got news for you, Franklin: "Late to bed and late to rise makes a man lazy, crazy, and despised." Wait... that didn't come out right. Wasn't Franklin the one who got shot? I sleep through my American history classes. Or at least, that's what people tell me I slept through. It could have been science class, for all I know. Or a Spanish class. Biology terms are like a foreign language anyway.

I don't know what it is, but there's something about adolescence that just kills me. I get up at five-of-seven--which is probably the latest that the lot of us get up, going by the national average--and sleep through many an afternoon. I can't help feeling a little bit depressed. That youthful energy that gave me the strength to do whatever I wanted, whenever I wanted, has been lost. And to wake up on a weekday morning, at a time that most theologians would deem sacrilegious, and to stop and think for a moment that today I'm going to see people I hate, learn things that I don't want to know, and hear things about people that I never wanted to hear in the first place -- then have to do it all over again, day after day, for weeks to come--it's just cruel and unusual. Which also makes it unconstitutional.

You see those kinds of people all the time. They're aimlessly wandering the halls, eyes glazed over, listlessly walking from class to class. What time did you get to sleep last night? "Ten." What time did you wake up? "Six." Then they usually push out a small laugh, knowing full well that it doesn't make any sense. I try to look surprised at the unexplainable fatigue, but I'm not. Somewhere I'm thinking that I feel the same way. "In the cockles of my heart," as Denis Leary would say. Then again, there are some that can survive on three hours of sleep every night. Not coincidentally, these are the same people who redefine the meaning of the word "burnout."

When I finally get around to rolling out of bed, I can't help but feel like my life force has been drained. After five years of waking up at this hour, my body still hasn't adjusted to the daily pattern. Some kids make it a point to get up at five in the morning, and then proceed to do some really crazy stuff--like watch the morning news. "The weather report says it's supposed to be cloudy and overcast." Why would you care? You're going to be peregrinating the sheltered halls of an education facility for the next seven hours. Besides, if you sleep a little while longer and then wake up, you won't even need to watch the television to know what the weather for today is going to be. You'll be able to walk outside and pretty much figure it out, connect the dots.

I can never seem to remember what time I fell asleep the night before. Everyone knows what time they go to bed; that's the designated bedtime--that's easy. But the subsequent point at which one falls asleep could be hours after that. Especially someone like me, who has developed some kind of strange insomnia in the last few years. I vaguely remember seeing the clock lighting up the number 1. Maybe it was 1:11 in the morning. Ah crap, I've only had five-and-a-half hours of sleep? I need at least...something more than that.

On most days I wouldn't have a chance in hell of waking up without my alarm clock. I have one of those old-school Nickelodeon alarm clocks that might have been cool when I was eight (or thereabouts). You can set it to the sound you want it to make when it goes off, ranging from military bugles to cuckoo clocks. That doesn't matter to me, though, because what's important to me is the voice that announces that the alarm clock is about to go off. Right before it sounds, a male voice shrouded in static counts down, "Three...two...one..." I always turn it off after I hear that.

But I will not get out of bed until I hear that voice. Sometimes I will, for some reason unbeknownst to me, wake up a few minutes before the alarm goes off. I'll look at the clock to see that the time is 6:53. But I won't get up. I will not and cannot get up to start my day until I hear that voice. In my bewildered and bedraggled state, sometime halfway through my sophomore year, I became convinced that the voice was none other than the voice of Buddha. That's right, it was Buddha himself who was calling me to rise each morning and seek enlightenment. You better watch yourself, or you might wind up with one of these Buddhist alarm clocks someday. The thing makes me paranoid, because Jesus isn't likely to be too happy when he finds out that I've been cheating on him by using another deity to motivate myself.

After that creepy debacle, I pull myself together. I prepare myself in short order for another day at Terryville High School. I say that with a bit of humor, because there's nothing that can really prepare you for Terryville High School, or most high schools, from what I can gather. Nothing except experience.

I quickly slurp a smoothie. I hate smoothies, and to this day my mouth twitches from the very thought of them. Why do I drink them if I detest them so much? Because they're the best thirty-second breakfast possible. Breakfast is, after all, the most important meal of the day. Still, there's nothing that makes them go down any easier. On really bad weeks, when the yogurt has been substituted with cottage cheese, and peaches have been added into the mix (the worst possible combination on the planet), I'll fantasize about eating Lucky Charms over summer vacation. Ooh yeah...hearts, stars, and horseshoes, clovers and blue moons; pots of gold and rainbows, and me red balloons. Summer vacation is so magically delicious when you spend it with Irish stereotypes.