It’s not my fault that I want to beat my children most mornings before they go to school. Ugly personalities plus moderate sleep deprivation can equal bad times in our house. The number of non-morning people compared to morning people is definitely disproportionate. I joke that John and I have remained married because we wake up at different times, but after an especially brutal morning, I’m not playing. I sometimes want a separation, if not from him, then from at least one or two of the kids.
This week, after multiple attempts to wake up Madison and Kenny, I found both of them entirely unconscious while midway ejected from their beds. Kenny was soundly sleeping—while sitting up—and Madison attempted a lame dismount from his teenage sleep nest. The only body part that resulted in reasonable success was his elbow.
The unwillingness to get out of bed, I can move past, because while my alarm is regularly set for 6:45, I rarely put a toenail to the floor boards before 7. Anything later forfeits my right to a shower.
What crazes me most are the chronic fights that begin outside the bathroom as soon as one Thompson encounters another. It’s like Wild America. It’s hard to stop myself from repeatedly slamming my head inside the kitchen cupboards. Some mornings I think a mild brain injury just might improve my personality.
Mostly, it’s the caustic conversations between Stancey and I that gets the blood pulsing in my ears. Her overuse of such loud phrases as “Shut up!” and “Get out!” causes my eyeballs to twitch. She’s very territorial of the bathroom and is hardened to Kenny’s pleas to use the toilet. Someday he’s going to get tired of begging for entrance and just pee on her door. I might just applaud him.
On a good morning I’ll say, “You know, it’s just as easy to be nice as it is to be mean.”
On a lesser morning I’ll say, “Quit being such a witch!” or other rhyming derivative that too easily tumbles through my coffee-stained teeth.
Usually, by the time I drop her sulking self off at school, I’ve managed to collect myself and acknowledge that my use of mild language and want of physical violence warrants an apology. But after our most recent exchange, I reflected on how much easier it is to be mean than it is to be right. As I pushed through the discomfort of being wrong, I smugly said through twisted lips,
“I’m sorry…Stancey…that you made me be mean this morning.”
And being the forgiving soul that she is, she countered my apology with a request for five dollars.
As I watched her disappear into the high school with my lunch money, I at least found solace that for six whole hours she would stress out someone else.
For those few moments when the car was all but empty but for Max and me, I basked in the victory that we managed to make it to the other side of yet another morning.
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