I have no trouble waking up in the morning.
But it wasn’t always that way.
When I was much younger, my mother had to get me up every morning for school. Some of my brothers and sisters were the same way.
Luckily, the grammar school we went to was just a block away, so even if we got up at the last minute we could still get there on time.
My father sometimes had the same problem, but he didn’t work far from home, either. I know plenty of times he’d drink half a cup of instant coffee and run out the door. But he had a good reason - he often worked late into the evening and was exhausted in the morning.
I didn’t have the same excuse. I usually went to bed early enough to get a good night’s sleep - about 9 p.m. That didn’t mean I’d fall asleep right away, but I still had enough sleep to get up in time for school.
Maybe I just didn’t want to go to school. I’m pretty sure I didn’t have any trouble waking up before sunrise on Christmas morning - no matter how late I went to bed.
It seemed I didn’t have the same problem during my high school years. I had to take a 40-minute bus ride to get there, so I must have gotten used to waking up on time. I think running cross country and track after school got me tired enough to fall asleep at night.
When I got my first job after high school, things changed again. At first, the company I worked for had a warehouse 25 miles away, and the starting time was 8 a.m. I’d get up early enough to get a ride from a co-worker who had a car. We were usually on time.
But years later, some of us were transferred to a different location when a new warehouse opened. It wasn’t as far, but the starting time was 6 a.m. and I didn’t have a car - or a ride. So I had to use public transportation.
Waking up at 4:15 was an ordeal, and sometimes I’d get up in time. I can still remember standing at a cold bus stop waiting for the first No. 9 bus of the day, the 4:55 from Exchange Place to the Bayonne line.
I was the first rider to be picked up every morning, and a few other guys who worked with me got on along the way. We all got off at the last stop and had to walk almost a mile along the railroad tracks, which was the shortest way into the industrial park. It was a pretty brutal trek if there had been a snowstorm, but somehow we got there.
A few years later, after I decided to go back to school, management was good enough to make me a supervisor and switch me to the night shift so I could attend classes during the day.
I thought that was great, until the regular 7 p.m. to 3:30 a.m. hours kept getting extended due to overtime. Since I was in management, I had to stay until the shift was over.
Sometimes that meant welcoming the 6 a.m. day shift. And then I had to go to classes, which sometimes started at 8 a.m.
I went through that routine for more than three years, often getting two or three hours of sleep each day. I tried to make the most of my weekends, but that was the only time I could try to catch up on my sleep. The rest of the world was on a different schedule. I’d wake up after 4 p.m. when everyone else was just about finished with their day.
Things changed again in my final year of college when the warehouse consolidated and they no longer needed the night shift.
I was out of work for a few months, but continued to go to school until I graduated, then found a regular nine-to-five job. But I had learned how to work on very little sleep, and ever since then I’ve had no trouble getting up in the morning.
That came in handy years later when I was raising sheep here on the farm. I was up before dawn every day, feeding and watering the herd and checking for new lambs before the work day started.
(I retired as a shepherd about five years ago.)
I’ve read that as we get older, we need less sleep. I know that to be a fact - at least for me. No matter what time I go to bed, I’m up before sunrise.
Just this morning, I woke up and looked at the alarm clock - 5:09 a.m., still almost an hour before the alarm was set to go off - and no sheep to feed.
