I've been informed by one of my readers that I am sometimes "prickly." Actually, she used a derivative of that word. It occurs to me that I haven't shared enough of the Inner Tony with my readers to help you see that despite my crusty, sanctimonious exterior, I am really a gentle caring nurturer.
Or some crap like that. In any event, I give you the wonder that is Tony:
Turn-Ons: Warm summer rain, a gentle touch, and wrestling with my wife for the remote control.
Turn-Offs: Bad breath, people in my way, and federal budget estimates that don't incorporate a dynamic scoring methodology.
Measurements: 65-34-41. No wait, that was my high school locker combination. Speaking of which, do you ever have that dream where you are in back in high school and you can't remember your locker combination? Or the one where you realize that you are enrolled in a class and you haven't been attending it? Freaky.
Nicknames: T, T-Man, T-Dawg, T-Bone, T-Money, T-Square, and Deke.
Hobbies: Hiking, reading to the visually impaired, and composing haiku that articulate the urgent need for world peace.
Interests: Russian literature, 17th century Impressionism, and the politico-theological implications of Bugs Bunny.
Accomplishments: National Honor Society, Ph.D., and once sat through an entire corporate training session while breathing through only one nostril. The instructor kept stopping to ask, "who's whistling back there?" It was pretty funny.
Favorite Books: I Had Trouble Getting To Solla Sollew, Job, and Our Bodies, Ourselves
Career Goals: I am double-majoring in English and Psychology at a large public university, posing nude in order to pay my bills. I plan to become an Internet entrepreneur environmental activist.
Social Causes: Hunger, poverty, and racial prejudice. I'm against them, I mean. Boo them.
The problem with morning people is that they think the rest of us are the problem. The reality is that the morning person is the classic interventionist; not content to bask in the glory of his cheerful morning, he finds it necessary to whip all those around him into a frenzy of morning exuberance as well. When this evokes hostility, he concludes that he is dealing with handicapped people whose natural capacity for joy at the prospect of being awake has been tragically truncated.
To the non-morning person, on the other hand, he is a miserable meddler who should choke on his seven-grain Blueberry Sunrise bagel. This opinion softens, of course, as the morning wears on. It's really more of a fleeting thought.
Being naive optimists, morning people never give up. Morning after morning they merrily bounce into the kitchen, eager to plan the day's activities, discuss the Relationship, have some good quality time. They are actually surprised when the person who growled at them yesterday morning, and the 3,757 other mornings they've shared together, is not any more interested today in extended conversation.
We non-morning people need ample time to decide whether the day will in fact be worth living. This can take some time and is usually prolonged by premature chatter about what is needed today from the Home Depot. Some might regard us as unnecessarily sour. Snap out of it, the morning person might say. Choose to be happy. To this I reply that excessive morning happiness is not a choice; it is an affliction.
Besides, morning people desperately need non-morning people. It is we who have kept an eye on the world through the ages; without us you morning people would have long ago had your genes eliminated as a consequence of skipping happily out the cave entrance and into the mouth of a tiger. It is the non-morning person who says, "shut your yap until I can see if there are tigers out there." That's our job. The job of you morning people is to pipe down and get us another cup of coffee.
The little man is three years old today. He's having trouble reconciling that with the fact that it's Tuesday. So if anyone asks, today is Threesday, got it?
