Yesterday at approximately 6:15 am I exited my condo for my usual morning walk. My condo is on a culdesac with 3 other buildings and each building has a bright street light at the end of the walkway so even though it was pre-dawn the parking lot was rather well lit. Just as I stepped into the parking lot the power went out and all of the street lights went out and the buildings went dark. Scared the shit out of me for a minute as I was plunged suddenly into total darkness. That woke me up for sure.
Last night my 6-month-old woke me up at 1:30, 3:00, and 5:00 (no idea what his problem was…just fussy, for some reason). At 6:30 when the alarm went off, he was snoozing peacefully!
But those are literal wake-ups…a figurative one like in the OP, I haven’t had yet today!
Years ago I got back to my apartment after an afternoon Constitutional Law class, sat on my couch, opened my ConLaw book, and minutes later I was asleep. It was about 3:30 on a warm spring afternoon.
Suddenly, a magnificent explosion made me jump about four feet off the sofa, books went flying, and I looked out the window. Someone must have put an M-80 in the mailbox on the corner across the street, because a couple seconds after I got to the window, the door to the mailbox reached its zenith and returned earthward, clattering on the sidewalk. My heart stopped pounding out of my chest about 3 hours later. Never want to wake up like that again.
Your cat does this on your head?
My mouse, Ralph, startled me awake this morning. He had hauled a whole peanut into his exercise wheel, then began running in it. What a racket! I thought I was being shot at.
Jet Jaguar. My cat. Usually he waits patiently for food, but if his bowl is empty he’ll camp out on the bed and poke me in the chin with his paw. He did this at $AM a few days ago. It appears the other 2 cats ate his food and he wanted more.
I once took off my drivers side mirror on a bridge abutment at about 3:00 am after I’d been driving too long without sleep. THAT will wake your ass up.
:smack:
My Army unit was on an alert exercise in Germany, 1971. We arrived in a small forest clearing 500 km from nowhere, very late at night after a long, exhausting convoy. We parked our trucks, threw up our tents and dove into our sleeping bags.
[CUE: sleepy music]
There’s something about the cool, calm of the forest that makes sleep all the more ‘comfy’ and ‘secure,’ right?
Until…
at one second past first light…
two F4 Phantom jets strafed our position at tree-top level.
:eek: :eek: :eek: :eek: :eek: :eek:
I can say this without fear of contradiction: If the Devil himself ever screams in anger, it sounds exactly like a Phantom jet 100 feet above your head.
It lasted nary a few seconds, but I’ll never forget it if I live to be a million. In less time than it takes one to pass wind, we were all cooked in imaginary napalm.
One guy not only soiled his shorts, he soiled the shorts of the two guys next to him.
The sound of a thunderclap early one morning, when it was still dark, about two inches away from our front door. I think I got from asleep to upright position, shaking, groping for the light switch, in two seconds flat.
Normally, it’s just some sort of garbled static thing from the alarm clock.
