Even though in many ways–and for many hours of the day–she is a delightful person, there is no way that my daughter, Clementine, could ever be confused with a morning person. I used to think that she inherited this trait from my sister, a person who considered the “crack of noon” to be the natural starting point for any day. (Once, after being forced by circumstances beyond her control to get up before dawn, she commented wryly that she had never before realized that 6 o’clock could come along twice in the same day.) This, however, is not Clementine’s problem: on the contrary, she usually wakes up on her own a good two hours before school starts, fully charged and ready to go. This is not a good thing: it’s bad enough having someone snarling at you the first thing in the morning–when they snarl at you for two hours plus it becomes another form of torture altogether.
Actually, if she were at all lethargic it would be a boon to the rest of, since most people would pick “grouchy and slow” over “grouchy and fast” any day of the week. Just think about Jurassic Park, and how the scariest creatures there were the velociraptors: not only did they have bad attitudes, they were scary fast to boot. In my house, Clementine is the equivalent of a velociraptor: not only does she wake up annoyed that the universe has failed to confirm to her expectations yet again, but she also wakes up this way at 6 AM each and every day of the week.
Sometimes, because she does wake up so early, I start to think that maybe the problem really is a lack of sleep, and will shoo her back into bed in the hopes that–in the same way that when you get an unsatisfactory answer from the Magic Eight Ball and you shake it again to try and get a better result–the next Clementine that crawls forth from the crypt will be of a slightly more pleasant variety. Unfortunately, this is usually about as successful with Clementine as it is with the Magic 8 Ball: all you really end up doing is going from “outlook not so good” to “my sources say no.”
Of course, none of this would be so bad if it weren’t for the fact that Clementine’s little brother, Clyde, is her complete opposite. He’s like a character in some 1930’s “plucky orphan with a heart of gold saves the day” movie, so blithely cheerful that you almost expect him to come out of his room wearing knee pants and a bow tie and declaring “I say, what absolutely spiffing weather we’re having.” Seeing the two of them together in the morning is like watching a concert where Huey Lewis and The News opens up for Marilyn Manson: not only is it hard on the audience, but Marilyn Manson doesn’t appreciate it much either. In fact, if pressed to articulate on her morning funk, Clementine would probably say that people like Clyde are the reason mornings are so unbearable for people like her.
In a way I can see her point–when she comes out of her room in the morning she is often no more than taciturn; however, once her own personal “little ray of sunshine” comes beaming out of his own room, all bets are off. It is like seeing a bear that has been peacefully hibernating being driven from its lair by a pack of yelping hounds, and just like with a real bear baiting, the version that is played out at our house is all to prone to turning ugly.
Sometimes I think it would be better if they were both morose morning people–at least it would remove some of the schizophrenia from our breakfast table. But then again, maybe not: I have to live here, too.