Jun 22 2005
How to be very, very unpopular:
Sleep in Mom’s trailer.
Wake up early, yanked out of sleep by the prospect of visiting the trailer’s official resident in the hospital (I have now spent enough time there to recognize the nurses by their voices – no visual aids required).
Go to bathroom at sister’s house across the yard.
When exiting bathroom, scare the friend who stayed over last night and was on her way into the bathroom, unaware that anyone else was awake.
Friend says there is coffee in sister’s house. Already made. Just sitting there seductively.
Given the looming hospital visit and the unbeatable allure of caffeine to the uncaffeinated, go in house.
Entrance announced by three large barking dogs.
Barking wakes up sister, who is famously unable to get back to sleep after she’s woken up.
Sister comes downstairs and asks, “When you almost never get up before 10 in the morning, why did you have to pick the morning of the day I’m starting three 12 hour night shifts to get up early?” (Note: she’s an Emergency Medical Technician, so it’s not like she’s just going to the office to play with paper and pens.)
I say something about coffee. She’s so scary I’m afraid to answer what was almost certainly a rhetorical question. I also don’t think it’s a good idea to say that I pretty much get up by 8 most mornings.
She points out that there’s coffee in the trailer.
“But not already made,” I tell her.
She looks at me with great disgust and says, “You know better than to come in the house.”
Now I do. And you do, too.