five more minutes please

The dreadful Monday after 4-day long weekend has arrived. I beat my alarm clock unofficially, waking up 3 times at 12AM, then 1:45AM, and finally 3:56AM. I did not get up till the buzz went off 4 minutes later. The road was quiet and air cool. There hang on the dark night a clear moon almost full. Two more days, I estimate, and it will surely be full moon.

I was the first in the office. My morning buddy, a motorcyclist, surprisingly was late – there has been this unspoken on-going competition between us “who gets to turn on lights first” and today I was more than delighted to claim my victory. Besides this childish competitiveness, there is something utterly essential about this “alone-time” before 5:30 when the next morning crew flood in. It’s as close as a therapy or even a religion. I have never actually thought about why and when it started till now…. Maybe it was along the time when I got back to work after 20 years of living in a world with much smaller population of four, sometimes even three when the children were young. Then this new life started and things changed. I was accustomed to speak in one syllable monologue for the longest time, and suddenly these alien-like, so-called “co-workers” submerged with different language and behaviors. I had to learn to talk to not only the 2 boxes on my desk called “My computer” but also these foreigners with way more complexity than the machines. The initial shock was accompanied by excitement, granted we are after all the socializing creature, followed by the unfortunate disillusion and then finally the acceptance accompanied by my morning therapy, and the coffee.

Are we really superior to our creation such as technology boxed in a container some of which is no thicker than 1 or 2 inches? I wonder. As frustrating as these boxes may be after one and half year of acquaintance, I find my fellow mankind, myself included, quite the contrary. I recall the pre-children young “career world” I was once in briefly, but even then there was already hint of disappointment. My passionate nature does the opposite of aiding. It actually became my biggest enemy in my dealing with the human world. While I may have this “love-hate” relationship with these boxes on my desk, I came to appreciate their simplicity and loyalty. For one, they perform their duty as you demand of them regardless of your sex or age. Moreover, they do not take offense with my black and white emotions. I have plenty of my emotional outbursts with them and they power up and open for me day after day faithfully. Not so with the other superior subject. I have tried a few times of grunting and found my co-workers not receptacle or forgiving like my boxes. Besides my extreme nature, I am as much alien to my co-workers as they are to me. What do people like me with grown-up children have anything in common with these 20’s or 30’s? I could see in their eyes what they are thinking: man, what are you doing here? You should be like dead or something. It is usually not until then when I see the reflection of this old person in their eyes that I realize I am out of sync. Emotions may be ageless, physical reality isn’t.

So like a child squirming back into his warm blanket at the annoying wake-up calls, I am hiding here in my quiet quarter for a little bit longer. I need time to check back in this ageless child and the full blown version of passions before coming out. I am waking up slowly; five more minutes please….