I Got Lucky Last Night

I'm what I would consider to be a "heavy sleeper"... Not that I actually gain mass as I lie there unconscious, but once I'm asleep, there's no waking up until the alarm goes off in the morning. I don't even have to get up in the night to use the washroom... After all the times I've ordered the Jumbo Jumbo Drink at the movie theatres (for the low, low price of only half of your next paycheck!) then had to force myself to "hold it" through the last 20 minutes of the show, my bladder is one tough hombre!

In High School, this was particularly a problem for the aunt and uncle I lived with. Waking me up in time for school was a challenge in and of itself... And believe me, they tried everything! My uncle hid my alarm clock so I couldn't just reach over and hit "Snooze"... He poured cups of water on my head...He even set off the smoke detector outside my room once. It was a little disconcerting that that last one was the least effective method of pulling me from my comatose state...

I'm telling you all this so you'll understand just how weird last night was.

For no apparently reason what so ever, I woke up in the middle of the night. Weird, huh? Wait, it gets better... I sat up and took a look at the clock, just to see how close my estimate of "middle of the night" was. I'll admit it took me a second or five to comprehend what the flashing "1:27" meant... Does my clock flash in the middle of the night? It doesn't do it in the daytime, I'm sure... Did I hit a button without realizing it? Am I just blinking really fast?

It turns out that, roughly 1 hour and 27 minutes prior to my unexpected awakening, we had experienced a short "power disruption". My lightning quick nocturnal mind surmised this fact as I went out of my room and found the clock on the stove flashing "1:28", the clock on the microwave blank, and my PC (which is always on because you never know what hour of the day a hacker may need to sneak past your firewall and corrupt your data) absolutely silent.

The clock on the VCR hasn't stopped flashing "12:00" since the day I hooked it up, so I can't say that helped any in my brilliant deduction.

So, I chugged a bottle of water from the fridge, reset the clocks, peeked in on my kid, then settled back into bed for a few more hours of sleep. It was then that I noticed both alarms on my dual-alarm clock had reverted to the default "OFF" setting during the power outage.

5 minutes and a few curse words later, I finally figured out how to reset them, without having to go on a hunt for a manual I'm positive I threw away, and I was off to sleep.

Now, this whole episode may seem rather mundane to most of you, but to me it was like a one-in-a-million thing. When I consider how screwed up my morning would have been, how late for work I would have been, and how bitchy this would have made me had I not uncharacteristically awoken in the night in time to avert disaster... Well!

I think I might just go buy a lottery ticket today... Or at least a backup battery for my alarm clock.