Early Mornings

I am not a morning person. Up until I was a teenager, I'm pretty sure I never saw a sunrise unless it was from an airplane (and even that was rare--I tended to sleep the entire 24 hour trip) or the few days I suffered from jet lag after every trip from Singapore to America or vice versa. I always enjoyed those days, though. My whole family being awake at three or four in the morning, and just hanging out until the sun came up. Then we would walk in the early morning coolness (although even that was hot to us after being in America) to the roti prata shop and enjoy the breakfast we had missed so badly while we were gone.
Even though I enjoyed those early mornings, as soon as jet lag was over, I was back to sleeping in until nine or so (one of the joys of being homeschooled). When I was seventeen, I got a job at a daycare that required me to wake up at 6:00 AM. I set my alarm and asked my dad to make sure I woke up. I took it for granted that he would already be awake--he's the only early riser in our family. While I didn't enjoy the actual waking up, I did enjoy heading out of the house while the world was just waking up. I actually kept getting up early even after that job was over, but before too much longer, I remembered how much I enjoyed sleeping in.
My next job was at Mcdonalds the summer before I started college. My brother and I both got the morning shift from 4:30 to 1:00. We figured that way we could get our work out of the way in the morning and have the rest of the day to do stuff. We were kinda wrong. We ended up going to bed as soon as we got home in the afternoon and basically sleeping until we had to leave for work the next morning. We were so exhausted all the time. Jody drove us in my awesome car, Blue32, and one morning he drove down the wrong side of the divided highway. When I pointed this out, he switched lanes. We jumped at the chance to change to the daytime shift.
Of course, in college, I had to wake up early every morning except for Saturday. Although some of my fondest memories from college are the Saturday mornings when my brother and I would get up early and go to Krispy Kreme or Bagel Heads, just the two of us. Now whenever I have the chance to go out early in the morning, those mornings are what I think of.
With all these fond memories, you'd think I'd be happy when Gehrig wakes me up at seven.