The Early Bird Gets Shot

My roommate made a phone call to a deaf person this morning at 8am. I know nothing about the person he called, other than that they can't hear. They're deaf. They must have been, since he was talking at the loudest volume at which a person can talk, and woke me up.

"8?" you say. "8? That doesn't seem so early." Well, Buccaneer, when you're in a solid 2:30-10:30 rhythm, 8 is mad fucking early. So I lay in bed this morning for 45 minutes, but had no chance of falling back asleep, since I was seething the whole time. This is a very unique state, and one I've been in hundreds of times in my life.

It's always the same experience-- it hits me that I'm awake purely because this person couldn't adjust their behavior to take into account that I was sleeping. And because this person needed to-- at full volume-- laugh, or argue, or talk on the phone, or cook, or listen to their horrible fucking music, or slam the door, I will spend the next 16 hours tired. Instead of living the coming day, I will be simply trying to get through it, because of them. And this very thought infuriates me to such a point that it's completely impossible for me to fall back asleep.

Then, lying there overwhelmed by hatred, the dilemma emerges. Do I get up and storm out of the room and unleash a screaming tirade? Doing so would leave me completely awake and destroy any remaining chance I might have had to fall back asleep. But in not doing so, the culprit will continue to make noise, and worse, will get off the hook without having to endure a shrieking, rumbling tirade. I tend to go with the tirade-- which is always way over-the-top because in the seconds I spend storming from the bed to the door it hits me that this now is 100% ensuring that I won't fall back asleep, and every step pounds more loathing into my soul, and by the time I see them, standing there with their hideous head, my reaction is so overblown that I generally end up apologizing later in the day.

These inconsiderate fucks tend to fall into a few common categories:

-The roommate
-The kid ("MAMA! IS DIS, IS DIS, IS DIS, DA TEDDY BEAW??! MAMA MAMA MAMA, IS DIS DA TEDDY BEAW??")
-The housekeeper at the hotel
-The sibling (my blood is boiling right now)
-The dog (it's a good thing I don't own a gun, because I would absolutely have killed a neighbor's dog in my day)
-The guy doing construction

On the topic of this last one, I recently ran outside in my underwear and began the tirade on a guy hammering something on a balcony of my building. During my tirade, I first realized it was 9:30am and I didn't have any ground on which to be reasonably angry, and then it suddenly hit me that I was in my underwear, and I stopped mid-tirade and then mumbled to myself as I backed quickly away and into my apartment.

Anyway, let me last mention one instance that has occurred a dozen or so times in my life, that is so heinous and maddening I will refrain from elaborating on it, only saying that this is when I have given my tirade, and then miraculously have fallen back asleep, only to have the culprit wake me...a second time. The thoughts I have had on these occasions should not and will not be printed.