“Good morning,” I said with a smile, happy to have awakened alive.

“Prove it,” came the reply from the face of another without a smile. The fellow looked as if he were carrying his bed with him.

Mark Twain wrote, “I have tried getting up early, and I have tried getting up late—and the latter agrees with me best.”

I was born into a dairy farming family. I grew up getting up at an unreasonable hour. I’m trying not to be such a skilled morning person. I have no cows that need tending.

My neighbor Crandall was picking the crud out of his eyes, when he told me that he was going to become a morning person. He has unrealistic expectations for increased productivity. Coffee offered hopes and dreams in a cup that helps jitter his nerves. Deep down, he’s a morning person. Very deep down. He’s a farmer who has changed to winter hours — sleeping later.

This would be quite a change for Crandall. He thinks that if you wake up bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, you’re a squirrel. He has always claimed to be allergic to early morning. He is a morning person only on Christmas Day. He loves everything about morning except getting out of bed. To him, there is p.m. and too a.m. early and too early. If the bed fits, he likes to stay in it.

Many people say that they’d like to become morning persons. Most of them are lying. You can’t be a morning person if you don’t get out of bed in the morning.

Studies have claimed that seven hours of sleep is the optimal amount. I think that depends on having an accommodating pillow. Other research found that caffeine helps with sleep inertia, making people more alert than they’d be without it. Another study discovered that young adults who consumed moderate amounts of dark chocolate had better visual function and short-term memory than those who didn’t. Chewing gum has been linked to improved cognitive function. Chewing gum while eating dark chocolate must be a life-altering experience.

If you have trouble waking up and getting out of bed in the morning, try drinking eight glasses of water right before going to bed. You will get up. Move the alarm clock far from the bed so you’d need to get out of bed in order to batter it into submission. Hitting the snooze button like it was an attacking grizzly bear is a good way to do some sit-ups. Get a snooze button that hits back. Get bitten by some creature that turns you into a superhero whose superpower is getting up early. It’s much better than having the ability to fly or becoming invisible.

The machinery in your brain might need overhauling. Change the way you describe yourself. Don’t tell anyone with a working ear, “I’m not a morning person,” as though it were etched in stone. Try telling them, “I’m a morning person.” If you hear yourself say it enough, you might begin to believe it. But you know how you are.

Wearing red might help. Certain colors can put you in different moods and red can boost energy, especially when a bull is chasing you. Keep Toro, both bull and lawn mower, far from your sleeping quarters. Try not to think about work before hitting the hay. Think about the Diet of Worms instead.

Laughter can be an energy booster as well as the best medicine that isn’t covered by your health insurance. If you want to laugh the first thing in the morning, stay away from mirrors. Read, listen to or watch something funny when you first wake up or think of whatever it is that always makes you laugh. If you regret things in the morning, sleep past noon. That makes you a problem solver.

You know that moment when you wake up and you’re full of energy and your mind is clear? Me neither. My problem, one of many, is that I often don’t get home until very late. That fact has taught me that when I’m in bed and the alarm clock sounds early in the morning, there is a huge difference between 5:59 and 6 o’clock. I’m not trying to become an afternoon person, just a little later in the morning person.

If you are trying to become a morning person, it might be difficult because you may not be an afternoon person either. You just don’t like getting out of bed.

I wish you strength during these troubled times.

 

Al Batt’s columns appear in the Tribune every Wednesday and Sunday.