Do Not Disturb

Some people hide their phones on themselves when they start drinking. I'm beginning to think I should hide my phone on myself when I'm sleeping.

When I first got a cellphone, about five years ago, I turned it off every night. Somewhere along the way, I stopped doing that. I guess I figured that if people really needed to text or call me in the middle of the night, there must be a good reason. (So not true.)

And then, in third and fourth year when I had a car, I always left it on because I lived fairly close to school, and I was by default one of the choices for people to call when they were stranded at school because time had gotten away from them when they were working on a project, or they'd been drinking at the campus bar (or some combination of all of the above).

I also had a friend working night shift, and 2 a.m. was the only time we could talk, because he was sleeping all other times. I got really good at being woken up by texts and being able to respond coherently.

I seem to have lost that talent.

A couple weeks ago, a friend and I were texting, and I was falling asleep. One of his last texts came through after I had drifted off, and so I grabbed my phone in a half-asleep state, and while a simple "Yeah" would have sufficed, I replied, "Meanwhile up yup." Don't ask me what that means, but at least they were all actual words.

Last night, another friend and I were texting. M.B. has this uncanny skill of knowing when I'm either falling asleep or am asleep, and chooses those moments to text me. Without fail. (There's actually a plausible reason for it, our lives and schedules are just about as opposite as you can get.) Luckily, she's one of my closest friends, so I don't mind...much. :)

We were talking about various things, and at one point, I meant to text to say good luck on an upcoming quiz. Her last text had woken me up however, so my return text reads "You'll do fine! Do your job <s z zzz I'll."

It starts off good and then just goes downhill from there.