What's the worst way someone ever woke you up? My dad used to just take all the covers off me and turn on all the lights. Then it would be cold and bright. I hated that. Then he'd begin to sing "School Days."

To this day that song gives me chills quicker than Sir Olivier asking, "Is it safe?"

-- Anonymous, April 23, 1999

Answers

Baby, you wanted a furby for so long, and now you finally got one and you never play with it. He just wanted to be loved, and all you filled him with this morning was venom. What kind of a Furby mother are you?

-- Anonymous, April 23, 1999

Hey! I don't go on your message boards and call you a bad mother. Oooh. That's it. Tomorrow I wake you up with the nose trimmer. You think you've got all your hair under control now...

-- Anonymous, April 23, 1999

The answering machine. Don't ever wake up to the answering machine. That was my lovely wake up this morning by my equally lovely husband.

5:00 am The husband comes in from a night of playing poker with the gang.

5:05 am After having placed all of my pillows over my head and thinking very angry thoughts. I finally get up and slam all doors allowing that infernal noise into my bedroom.

Husband's excuse. "I just wanted to clear it out." But now your up to meet Christa for your morning walk. Yeah but I still had 10 minutes before the alarm went off, I whined. Once up I did have a great work out but Damn if I'm not still annoyed by the answering machine this morning. Who ever thought they were a good idea.

-- Anonymous, April 23, 1999

Now, now.. when mom isn't feeling well, it's up to dad to take over.

-- Anonymous, April 23, 1999

Ok what is up with the significant others this morning? was it national wake your g/f up nasty day? mine kept nagging me for that morning quickie to wake *HIM* up.usually this is fine with me.. but noooo i needed sleep this morning...i WANTED sleep this morning... so he pouts.. well you can't let a grown man pout damnit... needless to say.. i am soo ready for a nap about now. (1pm)

-- Anonymous, April 23, 1999

Definately the burglar alarm on the house. Not only did it make me bolt straight up in bed which caused my heart to race out of control, it also put me into a deep panic thinking someone had just broken into the house. Being woken up with such a startle doesn't allow one to think too clearly. It's a good thing I don't own a gun. Or have a weak heart.

-- Anonymous, April 23, 1999

I know that I'm sorta on the wrong thread, BUT did you know that they treat new sheets with a formaldehyde solution to keep the sheet stiff and keep it from creasing and wrinkling longer? Same as on some white oxford shirts. Some folks are allergic to this-thus headaches and other stuff. Wash 'em if you hav'nt. There is your useless fact for the day.

-- Anonymous, April 23, 1999

Oh, man! Is that why I've had this terrible headache all week? Because I've been surrounded in it? Jeez.

that's it. the sheets are washed TONIGHT. No excuses.

damn. i didn't even think of that.

thanks.

-- Anonymous, April 23, 1999

The phone. If I'm asleep and the phone rings (especially if I've gone to bed early 'cause I'm tired, and the phone rings around, say, 11PM), I wake up with an absolutely massive adrenalin rush because my brain assumes (for no good reason) that someone's calling to say there's been an accident, and my dad's in the hospital or something. Of course, it's always some random acquaintance who was wondering if we wanted to come over for pizza in three weeks. Since I've just woken up, and am expecting the worst, I'm so relieved to hear this that I promptly chew them out and ask them to never call that late again.

Um, was that rambly enough?

-- Anonymous, April 23, 1999

My 25lb cat likes to curl around my head and sleep but on rare occasions the dog (only about 8lbs) likes to sleep there as well so poor Simon (the cat) is forced to move unfortunately his second favorite place to sleep is on my head. So I end up waking up gasping not able to lift my head due to the gerth of the animal located on my brain, and then he gets irritated with me for disrupting his slumber by moving MY head.

Although I did forget to mention the few seconds of fear in those sleepy moments thinking I'm having a siezure or something

No fun at all

-- Anonymous, April 23, 1999

My dog likes to wake me up by sticking his tongue either up my nose or in my ear. Nothing like smelling poop breath or hearing that heaving breathing followed by wetness to get your day started.

-- Anonymous, April 23, 1999

Waking up on your own 20 minutes before the alarm is due to go off, dozing back off and getting into a REEEEEAAAAAAALLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLYYY good dream, only to have the alarm wake you in what seems to be seconds later. THAT gets me cranky the rest of the day.

That and when I used to be in High School and would purposely oversleep and my mom would come in and yank every cover and sheet off the bed with me in it. Boy, that sucked.

Pamie, you and Eric are adorable with the little wake-up tiff. I'll be you anything in 20 years you two WILL BE the Castanzas.

"You're not giving away our water pik!!!!" "SERENITY NOW!!!!! SERENITY NOW!!!!!!"

:)

-- Anonymous, April 23, 1999

My dad used to throw open the door to my room and stand there in the hallway yelling, "uppie", over and over again. "Uppie, uppie, uppie, uppie." Yeah, like that. It was awful but at least he didn't use ice cubes like my mom.

-- Anonymous, April 23, 1999

My cat woke me up this morning by biting my toe through the blankets. He also likes to jump from the window sill above my head onto my chest. I know he thinks it's funny.

-- Anonymous, April 23, 1999

My cat's a biter too -- not only do I get woken up in the morning with her biting my toe, but sometimes she bites my foot if it's sticking out from the sheet in the middle of the night. It brings back all those horrible memories from my childhood about THE CREATURE UNDER THE BED. Only it's an ill-tempered black cat named Cosa.

Here's a really cool way to wake up -- when I lived in Dallas, I'd listen to Stern in the mornings and sometimes I would actually wake up laughing, having half-heard something amusing. But my crappie clock radio doesn't pick up 98.9 here so, no Howie, no Robin and no Jackie. :( I need a nap.

-- Anonymous, April 23, 1999

Ummm... I'm afraid I don't quite understand the question. Do you mean to imply that there's a GOOD way to wake up in the morning? :-)

-- Anonymous, April 23, 1999

Nothing like being woken up when your stupid boyfriend comes home drunk 2 hours before you have to get up to go to work and he can't even untie his own shoelace, making a lot of noise with the attempt.

But that's not the worst part - the worst part is then he passes out and you are left wide awake watching him sleep and then have to watch the clock as it ticks away to the moment when you have to leave for work, while your boyfriend is still sleeping deeply on the couch! AARGH!

-- Anonymous, April 23, 1999

I have two Siberian Huskies. For those of you who don't know, Huskies are medium sized dogs with the energy level of ten Furbies combined! Well, My mother has a tendancy to throw open the door to my bedroom, encourage the dogs to jump on my bed and maul me, and then start singing her version of "Lazy Mary"... Lazy Manda. Mothers.

-- Anonymous, April 23, 1999

My mother used to prance up the stairs in the morning, open my door, and screech "HOOTIE HOOTIE!!!!" Lord only knows why. My ex-boyfriend (fondly referred to as 'dumbass') once came home at 5am, threw a gas cap onto the bed and said "here's what's left of your car." And of course, there's nothing like waking up to a 6 foot long iguana perched on your chest giving you the evil eye...

-- Anonymous, April 23, 1999

It's a Furby thing, I tell you.

My Dad used to wake me up in the morning by coming into my room, where I lay in bed, peacefully, on my side, and he'd place his hands on my hip and shoulder and whomp me into the bed, in effect making me bounce up and down with the spring of the boxspring.

At the same time he'd sing (or "da da da") the tune of "reveille".

You know what? My Furby usually does that too when I wake it.

Damn Furby.

What is it with Dads singing to us to wake us?

-- Anonymous, April 23, 1999

My average morning if Eric doesn't know where the Furbys are:

radio alarm goes off: "Ohh! Kiss me! In the milky twilight"

(or whatever she sings)

Hit the snooze button. Seven minutes later:

"Then you really might know what it's like."

Hit the snooze button. Seven minutes later:

"Every morning there's a halo hanging on the corner of my girlfriend's four post bed!"

I swear I get hit with the one-two-three combo of Sixpence None the Richer/Everlast/Sugar Ray so many goddam mornings that I'm about to lose my mind.

But like L.L. says, I can't live without my radio, right?

-- Anonymous, April 24, 1999

Hey Pam, you picked an odd day to ask the question of being woken up - especially since I actually contributed my experience and then...I experienced something worse!

After leaving work, I saw my brother at the train station so I went over and pushed him - just being the usually loving sister and all. I just wanted to see his face when I did that, as that's what brothers are for.

Well, the reason I'm mentioning that is that he decided to get revenge - what a bad, bad brother. We took the train together and I fell asleep. His stop is the one before mine and he proceeded to wake me up from a very sound and comfortable sleep by...kicking me hard on my foot! It didn't hurt as I was too out of it to feel it if it did, but it scared the shit out of me.

It wasn't like I pushed him into the tracks or anything like that, and I didn't do it all that hard.

Revenge sucks....yawn!

-- Anonymous, April 24, 1999

Okay, I'm a morning person so I have no business answering this question, but even morning people can wake up grumpy if they're abused.

My oldest brother used to wake me up by grabbing me out of my bed and running outside to throw me in the swimming pool. He also used to throw nerf footballs at me while I was asleep, put frogs and spiders in my bed, and leave booby traps on the floor.

(And you wonder why I get up so early now.)

The cats all move into my room to cuddle at about 4:30 a.m., which usually insures that I'll be up by 5. Some mornings, though, I outlast them, and if it happens to be a weekend and my boyfriend happens to have forgotten to turn off his radio alarm clock, much grumpiness ensues.

Normally, though, I'm the waker, not the wakee. We're exercising every morning at 6:30 or 7 these days, which means I get the fun and exciting task of waking him up about three hours earlier than he usually gets up. For those of you who think it sucks to be woken up by a Furby or whatever, just imagine how pleasant it is to be the person who gets to be the bad guy every morning. Being cheerful only makes it worse -- the wakee will always hate you at six a.m., no matter what you do.

The best thing I've found is to turn on the lights and bring him a glass of juice. (Seems to be a blood sugar thing -- juice wakes him up faster than coffee.) Then I sit down next to him and talk to him, and shake him every time he tries to go back to sleep. If that doesn't work, I turn on country music in the other room.

That one has never failed.

-- Anonymous, April 24, 1999

OK, I am sooo not a morning person. So I have a system. Ever since I've been getting myself up, I have given myself a total of 15 minutes max to be out the door. I shower at night, no breakfast and NO thought involved. So basically, I *wake up* at about noon. Just to make sure I wake up, I have to have the alarm on at full blast, and I can never ever hit snooze. So when that thing goes off, I am usually on my feet, having vaulted from the bed. If I remain in the bed for as long as a full second after the alarm, I probably will NOT get up at all, it's taht sad.

About phones: The phone is in the kitchen, right outside my bedroom door,a nd like the alarm, it gets me out of bed before my brain can initiate a thing...sooo, I've had more than one telephone conversation in my sleep... Me [whispering] Hello?

Friend Hey Katy, can you give me a ride today?

Me [yawning] mmhmm sure Friend Ok when are you coming? Me this morning Friend no, I mean what time? Me A.M. Friend Did I get you out of bed? Me no Friend oh [pause]so, you think about 7:45 Me sure ok LATER Mom who was on the phone Me huh? Mom the phone me umm, the phone? Mom yea, the phone, you answered it Me, ohh right I'm giving someone a ride Mom who Me I don't remember, do you? Mom Katy, please let me get it next time Me ok, um, have you seen my socks? I know I carried them out here Mom, you're holding them Me oh...

and it goes on like that until lunch

-- Anonymous, April 24, 1999

I've decided to answer this as a *waker* rather than a *wakee*..

My husband, Dutch, is notoriously difficult to wake up in the mornings. It's so bad we actually have two, count 'em, two alarm clocks set to go off each morning. Not that they help, as I still have to shake him awake..

One morning I was feeling exceptionally pissy. I had had a rough night, tossing and turning, bad dreams, etc, and I just was not in the mood to play human alarm clock. So, when the alarms started going off, I stomped out to the kitchen, filled a glass with cold water, stomped back to the bedroom and then - yep, you guessed it - proceeded to throw it into my beloved's face.

Well, I have never seen him come awake so quickly before or since. Neither have I ever seen him move so quickly. I ended up on the porch, laughing hysterically while I waited for him to come to his senses and unlock the front door.

needless to say, I never used water as a wake up method again.

-- Anonymous, April 25, 1999

Two worst ways I have ever heard of waking up, fortunately not done to me.

My dad did both of these to his roommate in college who was fond of over sleeping. At one point if he missed another one of his 8 am classes he would flunk, so he asked my dad to get him out of bed in any way nessasary. The naxt day he would not get up so my dad having thought ahead w had placed a bag of marbles in the freezer. He pulled back the blankets and dunmped the bag of frozen marbles into bed with the guy. Needless to say he woke up.

This worked for a while, but after a time the guy got immune to the cold marbles. The next thing my dad did was evil to say the least. He took a one farad capacitor (if you are not familiar with electonics a one farad capacitor is a huge honkin' thing, and can deliver quite a shock). He charge the cvapacitor, and then discharged it across the guys toes.

He never overslept again.

-- Anonymous, April 26, 1999

My boyfriend would kill me if he ever read this, but he farts in his sleep. And usually, he lets one loose right around 6:30am, approximately 10 minutes before the alarm is supposed to go off. Loud enough to wake me from a dead sleep. Then, after the initial blast, about a minute later, comes the smell. This is not a pleasant way to wake up. Not at all.

-- Anonymous, April 26, 1999

my alarm would never wake me, even though it sounded like an air raid siren. so my mother used to have a joyous way of waking me up in the morning. My room would be nice and dark and quiet. All of the sudden the door would fling open, and my mother would begin flipping my overhead light in a disco-strobe light fashion, while singing one of her little songs she had made up that went something like "it's time to get up...get up get up get up!" now, my mother is an opera singer, so it's not like a quiet little song, she could blast me out of bed with her voice and crack my windows if she wanted. iee.

-- Anonymous, April 26, 1999

Four thirty in the morning, my then b/f comes in from a gig and proceeds to turn on the lights in the bedroom. I mumble "hey..." Then he grabs the covers and starts vigorously snapping them over the bed to make sure that it is perfectly made before he gets in. He didn't stop until my screaming alerted him that maybe this was inappropriate behavior.

This happened seven years ago, and he still can't explain what he was thinking. I married him anyway.

-- Anonymous, April 26, 1999

Worst- Waking up to the sound of a fart, then realizing it is because your older brother has positioned his ass directly above your face. Worse than that is the involuntary quick intake of air from the visual shock, which carries a load of pure, uncut methane directly to your olfactory nerves. Best- Waking up to the sound of a fart, then realizing that it was you. You have awakened yourself with your ass. While you may be a little peeved at missing out on the sleep, you can't help laughing uncontrollably for about 5 minutes. Although it is best for this one to happen when you sleep alone, it's funnier when you're girlfriend is there.

-- Anonymous, April 28, 1999

The thing that really makes me jump out from bed is when some inconsiderate someone out there who tried to be smart to the core to Use his God-given brain.......switch on the ceiling light! I can't stand it, it's juz to bright and I hate sunshine....and I am never able to cope to sleep in a bright room.

I guess this really makes me get up from bed, though a small alarm will simply perform the job!

-- Anonymous, May 01, 1999

i can't believe how many dads came in and SANG!?! i thought my step-dad was the only freak. he would come in, slam the lights on and sing, at full volume, "rise and shine, go to work on one leg!" i have no idea what it means, but i do know i would get very very sour if woken up this way. another way i've been woken up that is more interesting/amusing then bad, is by a dear friend of mine that i lived with for a bit. well she is quite the morning person. her dad built their home, and was usually up at the crack of dawn hammering and sawing so she usually had no choice but to wake up. anyway - the point is, when we lived together, she always wanted me to join her on her morning dog-walks. so she'd jump up onto my bed and start jumping up and down singing "good morning good morning good morning it's time to rise and shine, good morning good morning good morning i hope you're feeling fine!" with the last word shrieked out in a very very good immitation of a hyper 4-year-old. and as much as i love her, i am not a morning person, and i came pretty close to losing it on her a few times... but then she'd take my hand and pull me up and hug me and make promises of coffee and timbits until i dragged my lazy ass into some pants and out the door. man, i miss her...

-- Anonymous, May 12, 1999

We have an alarm clock that has the option of playing music or playing the worst sound in the world. It's this terrible SCREECH! SCREECH! SCREECH! SCREECH! SCREECH!

Until you slam the snooze button. There's an alarm in the show I'm in now that sounds the same way. My spine always shivers when I hear it.

Since Eric started working an earlier shift we switched places in the bed and now he's on the side with the alarm clock. Therefore my evening ritual of checking the clock seven times to make sure it's right has moved over to Eric's job.

He's slacking.

And lately he's been waking me up late, or he's left the clock set to SCREECH instead of music and then hops into the shower.

This morning, as the alarm clock screeched for the fifth time after several snooze hits I turned over to Eric and said in my best Dr. Evil:

"I have one simple request. And that is that you put the alarm clock ON THE FRIGGIN MUSIC SETTING instead ...of ...the screech!"

Hopefully, through laughter, he'll remember this time.

-- Anonymous, May 12, 1999

Something happened today that reminded me of this thread so I had to share. I have what claims to be, in the store, the LOUDEST digital alarm available. It is probably a true claim. I work a night shift so I sleep odd hours. I am not an easy person to wake up on the best occasion. Today I got to sleep a little earlier than normal. So for some reason I got up early; very unusual. I got around, and left to run some errands. When I get back at 6 in the evening, about an hour later, my neighbors are pounding on my door. My alarm clock has been going off for an hour or so, and it is apparently driving them crazy. I live in a house mind you, not an apartment. They take the opportunity to ask if it is possible for me to actually get up and turn the alarm off when it is actually waking me up, because sometimes I'll let it go off 10 minutes or so before I get up and turn it off. Keep in mind that this is usually in daylight hours. So I guess it is pretty loud---I'm not deaf--I guess my mom was right...I just have selective hearing. I told them that I would try to do better. They said that next time they were calling the police. Doh! An alarm clock felony. I guess they could charge me with disturbing the peace. Oh well; they should just be grateful that I got rid of my four firebell alarm clocks placed strategically around the room. Those things just could not be wound far enough up to have the stamina to wake me up. All they would do is wind down, and then when I finally woke up I would be late and not know just how late 'cause the clock stopped.

-- Anonymous, June 11, 1999