Set the Alarm for Life

One thing I can't get off my mind is time. You'd think it's because I'm getting wiser and more aware of the fact that it's running out. Of course the getting wiser part is true, but according to an old friend my obsession is nothing new. She told me that at pre-teen sleepovers if we got up at an hour I'd considered too late, I spent the rest of the day first announcing the real time and following it up with the time it would have been if we'd gotten up three hours earlier.

I wonder what the parents hosting those slumber parties thought when they heard me. They probably barely wondered why a 12-year-old kid had such worries. If I'd been the mom and come upon a kid like me I'd have said to the rest of the slumberers, "She's right." And after the party I'd have told my daughter that the girl in the polka dot pajamas with the ringlets wasn't going to waste her life.
 
Fortunately I seldom make that time calculation anymore. I'm usually a relatively early riser; probably the result of all those times I got up late and missed the extra hours on the back porch changing Barbie's clothes or in the swimming pool searching for marbles. But now, those rare times that I accidently or willingly sleep late, the mantra returns. It's normally not said to my friends (we don't have a lot of sleepovers) and it's only said out loud if I'm walking alone in the mountains in absolute panic that when it's 2:30pm it should really only be 11:30am. You can imagine the stress when in addition to the loss of hours I'm also in the next meridien before I should be.

I don't think that girl in the polka dot pajamas has wasted her life (yet), but she needs to wake up and remember how lucky she was that they weren't striped pajamas. We should all spend more time counting our blessings. Tomorrow is another day. And whether you call it breakfast or lunch, when it's 1pm it's really going to be 1pm.