Amy Lu's View

I’ve never enjoyed waking up. Even under the best of circumstances, I find it hard to leave the comfort of bed to start my day. Of course waking up is even harder if it’s cold or early or I haven’t slept well or I’m hungover—which of course never happens. (Waking up is even worse when you aren’t even actually asleep because for whatever reason you woke up in the middle of the night and can’t get back to sleep but that’s a topic/rant for another day).

I don’t like waking up, but I did have a wonderful experience recently participating in a collection of one-acts called “Wake-Up Calls.” I played two very different characters in two very different plays who received two very different wake-up calls. Ophelia, (yes, that Ophelia, in a “Hamlet” excerpt) got a metaphorical call from Hamlet telling her to “Get Thee to a nunnery” or, in other words, “Get the hell out of my life.” My other character, Marie, received a wake-up call in the piece “Feathers” when her adult daughter literally sprouted wings and flew away.

The Wikipedia defines a wake-up call as “…a sign or warning that alerts one to negative or dangerous behavior or circumstances.” It defines the call itself, but not the response to it. Being in the production of “Wake-up Calls” inspired me to think about wake-up calls and I realized that I always assumed the response to a wake-up call was proactive and postive.

But of course that’s not always the case. To take an extreme example, Ophelia reacted in a spectatularly bad way (suicide) to realizing that all was not quite right in Ophelia-Hamletville.

I’m not sure how Marie reacted her to wake-up call, as the short plays ends before the audience learns what she does next. I like to think she’s stirred out of her middle-aged routine, and realizes there’s still some excitement and adventure possible for herself and her husband (coveniently played by Chad). My “favorite” line from “Feathers”: “We’re not old, but we are too old to fly away. At least with her.”—So fly away without her, Marie! Choose your own direction!

(Okay, the portion of this post where I attempt to give life advice to the imaginary characters that inhabit my head space has now conluded).

So how do I react to wake-up calls? If I’m honest, I think I mostly hit snooze or ignore them all together.

I have had some major wake-up calls in my life, most notably when my mom died, and, in typical middle-aged lady fashion, my own health scares (vertigo, potential heart-weirdness). But these wake-up calls were almost too big to be meaningful. Yes, yes, I realized that life is short and I should be more appreciative and grateful, etc., etc,, but that is so hard to put into practice on a daily basis.

So maybe more focused wake-up calls are more effective. Such as, when the checkout girl at Target asks me if frozen Weight Watcher meals are really “that good,” does that mean I should reconsider how many I buy and eat?

Maybe I expect too much from wake-up calls. Maybe they aren’t just one-time course corrections. Afterall, I have to reset my alarm every night, because I keep going back to sleep (or at least, bed). Maybe wake-up calls function more like that little floating guy in MarioKart who floats in front of you with a flag and a pissed-off look on his face to let you know you’re going the wrong way.

I’d also like to make the case for positive wake-up calls. As in, “Hey, look at this awesome thing this person is experiencing or doing, maybe you can do that, too.” I think that’s the type of wake-up call Marie gets in “Feathers.” No, she probably can’t fly off with her daughter, but that doesn’t mean she can’t experience her own flight. A different take on schadenfreude, where we’re inspired by others’ happiness and success rather than delighting in their dumbassery.

I don’t want to contradict the Wikipedia, but I think wake-up calls can also alert us not just of a problem but that things are actually pretty damn good and we need to stop taking them for granted.

Perhaps, as I get older, I’ll stop hitting the Snooze button as often because I realize I have less time left to sleep in.

Or, more accurately, I don’t have an actual snooze button to hit because we use our smart speaker, Alexa, as our alarm, and I keep forgetting the command and yell “Pause” at her.