I Don’t Like Worms

The early bird gets the worm. I don’t even like worms, so why do I continue to get up at four AM, I must have lost my mind. My grandfather convinced me as a child that I would be ahead of the pack if I got up early, I believed him. If I’m ahead of the pack, my finish line, Central State Hospital has closed, I got up early all those years for nothing. The only people you can talk to on the computer at four Am, Forrest Gump, Jessie Jackson, Sarah Palin, Slingblade and that guy from the Stand, m o o n that spells idiot.
Even criminals have enough sense to stay in bed. That’s what I tell people who are afraid of the dark. No one is out there, you’d have to be a pretty motivated criminal to get up that early. After all that’s why they chose their profession, they get to sleep in. I could understand if someone was paying me big bucks to get up this early, but to continue to do it for free is insane.
I envy people who can sleep until noon, it must be nice to have a mind that can relax that long. Mine starts at three sometimes earlier. It nudges me and tells me it has something important to say. I argue with it until around four and then just get up. I’ve gone back and read my columns, who does it think it’s kidding, I’m not going to win any Noble peace prize. Still it’s the time of the day when my mind is the clearest and there is no one out there to bother me.
Even my dogs, well when I had dogs, would wake up, roll their eyes at me and go back to sleep. I think that’s why they loved me so much. They felt sorry for my being so thick. I’ve only worked third shift a few times and guess what I’ve found. The people who work it regularly are some strange puppies. I don’t know if they were put together that way or if third shift did it to them.
All right it has its advantages. You meet people you’d never meet otherwise. I’ve met Santa Clause several times. Hey, we’ve become quite close. He likes coffee, the cookies and milk cause him to be overweight, have diabetes and high blood pressure. His career choice makes him spend a fortune on Jenny Craig every year. Mrs. Clause is a misnomer because he’s been married several times over the years. Imagine being married to a guy that big who only works one day a year and hangs around with all those Elves who surely have little big man complexes and probably don’t get much sleep either. The price of reindeer food, his gas, if you can grasp that, has skyrocketed. He asked me to tell you to leave anything a self-respecting reindeer will eat. Just no lettuce please, it gives them the poops and the last place you want to be is behind a bunch of flying reindeer with the poops.
I’ve met the Tooth Fairy. He’s interesting, but not as nice as Santa. He drinks way too much coffee, gets very little sleep and is quite ill about it. He wears clothing and shoes that you’d expect someone with Fairy as their last name to wear. Yet he has an attitude because people get the wrong idea about him. “What were my parents thinking?” he asked me. I don’t know, maybe they were people who got up too early, we do have twisted minds. He says he’s been married twelve times, can you imagine being Hilda Fairy, Carrie Fairy, Terry Fairy or Mary Fairy?
I think he’s getting a bum rap, but the pink, lacey tutu and the ballerina shoes just don’t help. His car is a plaid Mini Cooper and he has strong famine traits. I hate to break it to you dude, but even in the daylight you might better stay away from redneck bars and the Republican party headquarters. Isn’t that ironic, he’s discriminated against by some of his best customers.
So I’ll keep getting up to produce stories like this one, twisted thoughts from a twisted mind. One day Forrest, Santa, good old Tooth, here’s the one that scares me, possibly Pee Wee Herman and I will be sitting on the beach in Boca Raton, retired. Hey it ain’t bad, they got good war stories to tell.