What Gets YOU Up in the Morning?

The other day, my dad asked me a pretty simple question: what gets you up in the morning?

It was kind of one of those odd, silence-breaking, thought provoking questions that come around about once a month.

So I sat there and ruminated.

My first thought was: not a whole lot. On days that I don't work or have school, I usually sleep into and often through the noon hours, on into 2, maybe three o'clock. The world keeps humming along at a blistering pace, and there I sit (lay, rather), inanimate and completely tranquil.

Then I thought about the question from an even more literal perspective. Well, often times it is a beeping alarm clock that first molests me in my groggy funk. It starts off slow and monotonous, but then gradually crescendos into rapid fire like an AK-47 assault rifle. Or a machine gun.

By that point, I usually decide that I can't take it anymore (my family/roommates are long passed that by then and are ready to rip my alarm from the socket in the wall, and me from my bed), so I decide to hit the sleep button and see if I can last 10 rounds of "snoozing" the thing. I usually can't. I turn the alarm off by round seven, knocked out, and sleep away another two hours.

I started thinking about a few days back when I was perusing through a list of majors that are offered by the University of Kansas. It's the summer before my junior year of college, so I figured it might be about time to figure out what I want to do with my life.

So I was checking off majors that I knew I wasn't too terribly interested in or qualified for: Oboe? No. Slavic Languages? Nie. Tribal Law? I beg your pardon?

That's when I stumbled upon one degree in particular that caught my interest. Undecided (undergrad, PREP) College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. I guess with a major like that, the only way to respond to someone who asked you that infamous, glib of a question: "well, what are you going to do with THAT?" would be to say, unabashed: "well, I don't know, really. I haven't decided."

Am I interested in being undecided? Well, I wouldn't say I'm morally opposed. Am I qualified to be undecided? Most definitely.

So I highlighted Undecided as a possible candidate and made a small note to self: "this one has potential."

Another major that really snatched my attention: Colon & Rectal Surgery.

How, exactly, does a prospective freshman in college tease through all 299 degrees that KU has to offer, and narrow down the field to that? You have majors ranging from Interpretive Dance to the French Horn. And everything in between. Didn't you enjoy playing the French Horn in elementary school? Bobby, you played a mean French Horn! Why don't you give it a try, I'm not so sold on this Colon stuff.

I mean, I guess SOMEBODY has got to do it? Maybe the allure of fingering around someone's duodenum was just too tough to pass up?

In twenty years, when asked this same question, I'd like to be able to answer it with a variety of two word combinations: my job, my family, my Royals, etc. I'm too optimistic to count out my job or potential family as possibilities, but right now, the Royals might be wishful thinking.

I haven't answered the question yet, and I'm sure many of you haven't either. But maybe you haven't even asked yourself the question yet?

Try it.

You might eventually answer it with: my children, my nagging wife, long walks on the beach, or conducting a nice colonoscopy at the crack of dawn. Keyword: crack.

So have at it: what gets you up in the morning?