rude awakening

this morning i was woken up by a pair of plastic legs falling on my head. they belong to the wangly, dangly, glow-in-the-dark, plastic skeleton that hangs from a string on the dragonfly sconce above the bed. it seems that gravity had got the best of it and with a plop, the legs dropped and ricocheted off the headboard. from there they slid and skid and plopped atop my head. i had been laying there in that cool morning haze where you know you need to get up and shower otherwise you may sleep the day away. and i knew i had to get up and shower soon as the construction crew would arrive shortly and they are still working in the bathroom next door.

i'm not sure what startled me more, the pop of the plastic hitting the headboard or the dangly drop of bony feet on my head. either way, i startled awake to begin my day. the sound the legs made as they dropped reminded me of an alarm clock. many years before the mister, i was involved with a fella who professed a fondness for marvin the martian (among other things). not long after we started dating i gifted him with a marvin alarm clock for his birthday. it was shaped like his spaceship and when it was time to alarm, a small modeled marvin would shoot out of the top and bellow:

"wake up Earthling, we havn't got all light year!"

now, this voice was loud and echoey and loud and wouldn't shut up until you whacked him back into his spaceship. as loud and annoying as marvin was, his voice isn't what woke you up, it was the sound the plastic mechanisms made to shoot his little body out of the top of the ship. that clickity-clackity pop of a clack would startle the sanity right out of you. for a long, long time, we continued to set the alarm and wake-up with this insanity and after a while, our bodies developed a rhythm of sorts and we could wake-up seconds before the startling clack. our eyes would open and marvin would clackity clack up out of the ship and holler his good morning. with a satisfied smirk, one of us would then wallop him back into the ship and thus our day would begin.