Self-preservation or what

I am a night person. I have trouble waking up in the morning. But after I got married I had to make it a habit to wake up early simply because I started my marital life living with my in-laws. Actually, I had no intention of living with them. I told my newly-wedded husband that I would only live under the same roof for a week. During the week, we found a house and paid 2-month deposits for the rental. When my husband informed his widowed mother about our pending move to a rented house, my mother-in-law cried. So my smart-aleck husband left the decision to me. That’s to stay or not to stay. Of course, I wasn’t too dim-witted to know my future good relationship with my mother-in-law would be based on my decision. I must say I had made a right decision as my mother-in-law treated me wonderfully. I stayed with my mother-in-law for more than a year. She knew we would move out sooner or later as we gradually had been buying stuff for the house of our own.

When I was schooling, I had a difficult time waking up in the morning. I adored afternoon school. Every morning when I woke up I would crawl under my bed to continue my sleep. Predictably, my mother would check my room before she went marketing. I would wake up immediately upon hearing my mother’s voice in the hall way. Occasionally, my grandmother would blow the whistle on me as she could see that I had the making of a lazy-bone. Most of the time my mother didn’t take notice as I appeared to be busy the moment she’d set her eyes on me.

I remember there were two occasions I played truant with my middle sister. I was in Std. Two and she was one class below. It so happened we were late to school. The first time, we hid in the vicinity of our house. The next time, we hid in the vicinity of our school. If we didn’t die of fear of being caught by our mother, we would have died of boredom. The endless waiting for school to be over was killing enough.

When I was a little older I was a little smarter, I went to school to face the music, so to speak. When I spotted the two prefects at the gate, I told them I woke up with a tummy ache and was advised by mother to skip school. But I didn’t want to do so. The strained and pained look on my face convinced one of them to carry my school bag all the way to my class.

On another occasion, I was caught sleeping in class by my Geography teacher. In all honesty, I was trying hard not to fall asleep. But her monotonous voice and her boring lesson drove me to it. With the text book popped open in an upright position and I did the unspeakable thing. I was awoken by the loud voice of the teacher, followed by a chorus from the class that “She isn’t well.” The austere teacher sent me to the library for a rest. My good friend even brought me a cup of tea. It was passed through the large library window.

I spent a lot of time in my bed, apart from sleeping: I loved to read in bed. When my grandmother suffered her first stroke, I crawled under the bed to cry. When I was in Form Two and my elder brother was in Form Four, we had a fall-out because he considered I was rude to his visiting school friends. My one and only crime was being unfriendly to his friends. I went to an all-girl school and he attended an all-boy school. He mistook my shyness for unfriendliness. I slighted him by snubbing his friends. In front of them, he would taunt me, “Oh, the mouse is going to hide inside her room.” I always stayed in my room when his friends were around.

Four years later, I met three of them on separate occasions but I pretended no recognition of them. By then, my brother had a different set of friends. I was no longer a shy girl but I still didn’t mix with my brother’s friends.

I was the smart mouth of the family and every time my brother and I had a verbal exchange he would lose to me. For a couple of years we hardly spoke to each other.