Leg cramp, without a doubt. Lot’s of things that suck have woke me up, but there’s nothing like a charley horse to bring you from fast asleep to bolt upright in screaming pain in .01 seconds flat.
At the age of 45, a call at 3am informing me my best friend was dead of a heart attack.
Me: Dead asleep
They: “MERNEITH? Do you know how to tie a tourniquet?”
Someone throwing up in my bed (and it wasn’t me). In all fairness, a parent learns real quick to wake up at the “Mom, I don’t feel good” instead of allowing it to esculate to the point of said child vomiting while standing next to a parent’s bed (or while crawling into it).
I’m a heavy sleeper, but that initial cough will bring me instantly awake and in motion.
Notwithstanding being told of a death in the middle of the night (seriously, has any good come from a phone call after 1AM?), my mom had a particularly sadistic wakeup. Every year, from when I was six years old to when I got old enough to figure it out, the first thing she’d do on April Fool’s day was wake me up to tell me that it snowed the night before and school was cancelled. MEAN.
Oh yes, the fire alarm. Whoever designed that piercing shriek…well, I suppose it’s worth it when your house is actually on fire, instead of just low batteries or something else innocuous.
An aerosol can and a lighter being used as a flame-thrower on my face. This was at camp as a kid in Ontario. The camp thought it would be charitable to bring in some underprivilegded kids from Detroit, who unfortunately were very violent. They lasted only a couple of days before the camp sent them packing.
Lots of fire alarm wakeups, mostly in college from drunk students who pulled fire extinguishers or alarm stations - this was usually 1-3 times a week. However, the last one was the building alarm at our last apartment building; someone in the next-door apartment had fallen asleep with a lit cigarette, and their place was in flames. After my husband and I woke, we could see the origin of the smoke from the window when we peeked out to confirm what that sound was, and saw residents from that apartment standing outside. I touched the adjoining wall and it was very cool - yay firewalls! - and there was no smoke in our apartment, so we were able to throw on simple clothes, jackets (it was winter), grab keys and wallets, and stuff our ferrets in a pet carrier. We had no damage to our apartment since we didn’t even share a hallway with the damaged one due to the construction of the building.
One time the bedroom ceiling collapsed right on me, that woke me up quick!
I’ll see your
and raise you a
“This is not drill, this is not drill, General Quarters, General Quarters! All hands man your battle stations. Go up and forward on your starboard side, down and aft on your port side. General Quarters, General Quarters!”
Cat paw to the face. Repeatedly.
The smell of burning pubic hair after falling asleep, naked, in a tent with a joint in my hand.
An idiot who was my roomate for a short time freshman year in college had wired his stereo speakers to his clock radio. He claimed he was very hard to wake up, the only thing that worked for him was having the clock radio on the “Buzzer” setting, piped through the speakers.
I jumped out of bed and was standing on the floor with my heart pounding in full fight or flight mode, before I was even awake. Idiot.
In recent years being shaken/swatted awake by my wife in the middle of the night so she could tell me the latest details of the vast delusional conspiracy she was convinced was persecuting her wasn’t too much fun.
My very first night away at college, the fire alarm went off in the dorm in the middle of the night. Doesn’t seem like a big deal, but when you consider it was my first time that far away from home without any other family members around, waking up in an unfamiliar place to the sound of a blaring fire alarm… yeah that kind of sucked. My roommate and I were both so freaked out that we left the room without our keys and wound up getting locked out of the room.
And then there was the time I was awakened by hearing my step-daughter yell “Oh my god that’s the biggest spider I’ve ever seen in my life!”
These days the most unpleasant way I get awakened is from my wife, who has restless leg syndrome, digging her twitchy toenails into my calf.
Call to prayer. The closest I have ever been to a minaret was at the hostel I stayed in Mostar, BiH. I had arrived at night and had totally not seen the mosque right fucking next door. I have been informed that part of the early morning call means “prayer is better than sleep”. I beg to differ.
REALLY loud church bells in Venice.
Police sirens after someone blew up a bus station on my university campus in Jerusalem. I somehow slept through the actual explosion though, which woke up most everyone else on campus.
Donkey sex (in Bulgaria, of course).
Cat attacks.
Reveille a month after I was out of Basic. We were in Florida and I was asleep by midnight. A friend decided it would be funny to play that right next to my head.
I was halfway through making my bed before I woke up.
In a youth hostel in Paris, a nice young Mexican gentleman threw up on me while I was asleep. Fuck the bottom bunk.
If true, this certainly has me beat, but here goes.
In the late summer of '89, my unit at Ft. Hood was entering a “Gunnery Cycle,” wherein we qualify as crews with our tanks.
The first gunnery range, or “Tank Table,” was the range where we boresight in our main guns, and eliminate any technical problems with our gunnery systems.
We’d completed our morning fire with little problem, but, as always, a few tanks/crews had minor problems and needed to re-fire at some later point before leaving that particular range.
In the meantime, I was stretched out on top of my tank’s turret, bagging some much needed Z’s. Our tank was OD Green; my uniform (coveralls) was OD Green; and we had a lot of stuff piled up on our tank turrets (field gear), so I was pretty well camouflaged to casual observation.
Around 3:00 that afternoon, the few tanks with problems were ready to re-fire, but I slept right through all the radio calls warning that the range was going live.
My “wakeup” was the tank parked right next to mine cutting loose with a 105mm main gun round.
Gotta second a leg cramp. I hate those things. They get me from peaceful slumber to bloodcurdling screaming in pain in about 3 seconds.
I still remember the very first one I got when I was a young teenager–I had no idea what was going on, but I thought my leg was trying to kill me. I screamed in pain and confusion–and my mom was suddenly in my doorway. (I imagine that’s one of her her worst way to wake up stories.) My dad was right behind her. I scared them half to death because I couldn’t really get her to understand what was going on for what seemed like an eternity.
THEN she just grabs my calf and starts digging the heel of her hand into my leg to start trying to loosen the cramp, which resulted in another scream from me. This was on a week night. I think I got to sleep again about 5 minutes before my alarm went off.
Waking up in a puddle of cold pee from your toddler bunkmate is always pleasant, too. It just chills and soaks you like nothing else I can describe. Ugh.
When my dad turns off the damn AC.
It gets pretty hot pretty fast in the carribean.
Not a pleasant way to wake up if you are not a morning person.
But hell, getting attacked by a bear is a little bit nastier I’d say.