Little Mary Sunshine

I am not a morning person.  The sooner you know this about me, the better friends we'll be.  There is nothing I hate more than having my sleep interrupted.  I've been known to rain hellfire down on anyone who calls me while I'm sleeping.  It's all I can do to be civil to most people before noon.  I used to have a roommate in college who would start the day with, "Mornin', Sunshine!" It set my teeth on edge. Not only do I not like to talk to anyone early in the morning if I don't have to, but I certainly don't like to be made fun of and called "Sunshine" because of my not-so-delightful early morning demeanor. She never did get that hint.  If it was acceptable, I would never leave the bed before midday (I'd stay up till the wee hours, though, so as not to waste time).  But it's not, really, so I'm forced to rise at the ungodly hour of 7:00 each day to get ready for work. 

Mostly it's not so bad, as WH usually has either already gone to work or is still asleep, so I don't have to talk to him in the morning (and he's not really a morning person either).  I ride the bus and speak to no one.  And then I get to the office.  The front desk guy in our building is exceedingly friendly.  I find that I steel myself for his cheer each morning.  "Good morning, my friend!" he says.  I can slink by without speaking if there are a bunch of other people arriving at the same time (and that's just the way I like it).  But there are those days when I have to muster a "Good morning."  Those are not my best days. 

Once I get to my office, I usually say a cursory good morning to anyone I might run into on the way to my desk.  Then I sit down and hope that nobody talks to me until at least 10:30.  This works pretty well most of the time.  But that wasn't always the case.  I used to work in an office with Little Mary Sunshine.  You have probablly met her (or someone just like her) at some point in your life.  She is always cheerful.  She ends all of her sentences with exclamation points!!!  She has corn syrup running through her veins.  She says "darn" and "poo" and "geez." She is enough to make you want to slap her mother for giving birth to someone like her. 

Anyway, the LMS in my former office was the queen of them all.  She sat right next to the door to the office, too, so I had to walk by her every morning in order to get to my desk.  And, of course, she always got to work early because she is what we like to call a morning person.  I'd peer in the door, hoping she'd be on the phone or have her mouth full of oatmeal or anything that would stop her from speaking to me.  But she never was, and thusly I was greeted with, "GOOD MORNING, WASHINGTINA!" every single morning.  Rainy days, sunny days, days where the sky was falling, this woman was officially the worst. 

Turns out my other coworkers were not exactly enamored of her either.  Finally someone in the office realized that we could go a roundabout way through our conference room to avoid the barrage of saccharine-sweet greetings.  That, unfortunately, only worked for a little while, because she would then come find me at my desk to say "GOOD MORNING! AND HOW ARE YOU TODAY?!"  I really hated her for it. I'm pretty sure she hated me too . . . but she'd never let me know that.   She was way too nice for that.  Instead, I think she took sadistic joy in taunting me each morning with her chirpy enthusiasm.  I could always imagine her going home to her husband and having a good giggle (she always giggled, never laughed) about my obvious dismay. 

The good news is that she got pregnant and we were all saved from having to pretend we were human early in the morning when she left her job with us to be a stay-at-home mom.  We threw her quite a lavish party, and I'm convinced it wasn't so much the good wishes for the baby (sure, we had those), but a deep-seated joy that we wouldn't have to act like we were awake before we'd had our morning dose of caffeine. 

Are you a morning person?  A night owl?  A Little Mary Sunshine?