Wake Up Call

When mother called and asked if I would be at the house by 4:45 p.m. in order to wake her husband, my step-father, who doesn’t officially live there anymore, but sleeps in the recliner more than occasionally, and needed to be somewhere at 5:00, I was irritated. I was just leaving work, after a full day, looking forward to crashing on grandma’s couch for more than 15 minutes.

I didn’t want to be anyone’s personal alarm.

“He won’t wake up to a phone,” she said. “And I can’t be there because I have to be at grandma’s. Gerlach’s is dropping off the riding lawn mower tonight and,” gibber, jabber, etc.

I felt like screaming, especially when we intersected at grandma’s and she kept checking her watch. “Well, why don’t you get home and let the cats out,” she hinted, since grandma knows nothing about her moved-out husband’s recurrent appearances.

Well, WHY DOESN’T HE LEARN HOW TO WAKE UP TO AN ALARM LIKE THE REST OF THE WORLD, I thought to myself, and managed to voice snarkily over the phone to Jason.

In a very composed, smart-alecky tone, he replied (most anthropologically), “Well, who decided everyone must be capable of waking up via alarm?” I.e., who authorized this standard we now just take for granted, a norm naturalized by a high-speed, mechanical generation?

As much as I wanted to pout in that moment, I sighed a sigh of gratification. For two reasons:

1. Even though Jason was no doubt taunting my usual approach to such constructed norms, he managed to appropriate it, call me out on my unfounded resentment, and demonstrate that, in fact, he does listen.

2. I don’t need or want the world to be trained by maddening cell alarms anyway.