I’m Woke and Commercial-free

Waking up is hard to do.

I’m not above trying to trick myself by setting my clock ahead 10 minutes. I’m so groggy in the morning that it takes a while to sink in that I’ve been fooled.

I prefer to wake up slowly, gently, with little birdies lightly chirping in the quiet morning sunlight.

That being nearly always unattainable, I’ve been left to artificial means: alarm clocks.

In high school my mom used to wake me up, which started gently and escalated into annoyed yelling, sometimes culminating into her reaching under the blankets to pinch my toes. It was all my fault, but I still get irritated thinking about it.

On one hand, I really dislike [despise/abhor] these artificial means of waking up. On the other hand, I’m really unimpressed  [uninspired, reluctant] with morning. I don’t have a good attitude. I’m not bright, I’m not chipper. I’m not really verbal.  And I don’t really think a good day should start with torment.

I found a solution I could tolerate. For years I woke up with the radio setting instead of the alarm setting. I set the radio for the local information station.  Some intelligent, calm people would talk about news, traffic, and weather. No music. No shock jocks.

During baseball season they talk to Brewers’ personnel and game announcers on different days. Same with the Packers during football season, and same with the Bucks during basketball season. All in all, I could wake up without causing much harm to my fragile morning psyche.

But then I started waking up to the Pella lady yelling at Packers broadcaster Wayne Larrivee about windows and attractive financing. Or the Penny Mustard dolts would be broadcasting their special brand of verbal slapstick. Maybe it was one of the Milwaukee Diamond Wars fellas. Or the “creative genius” guy. Or the Glass Doctor figuring to fix my panes, if I’m so inclined. I’m unable to list all the radio pollutants out there, but they know who they are! Don’t get me started on campaign season since I live in a purple battleground state. The result: I couldn’t push the snooze button fast enough because I really can’t do anything fast at 6:30 a.m.

As the unwanted noise amped up, I had to jump ship.

As a result, I’ve found a lovely station that doesn’t ever come in and I tune my dial there with volume at medium to low. When I wake up, there’s a low murmur of static. This station doesn’t even try to tune in itself so my morning static is gentle and clear.

I don’t know the three-day forecast or how traffic is on the inbound bypass, but there’s no yelling, blaring, toe pinching, or commercials.