Apathy Sketchpad

I am locked in a long and bitter battle against myself. The origins of the feud are hazy, but I can recall some of it. You see, though I am typing this by moving my fingers in a fairly precise way to strike what often turn out to be the correct keys, this action comes so naturally to me that I can do it all just be wanting to. Other actions, such as getting out of bed, are less natural. I firmly believe that had mankind invented the comfortable bed before the reasonably secure house we would have never survived in the wild. We would have been wiped out by pumas, or some other scarily large cat.

I cannot get out of bed just by wanting to. I just lie there, telling myself “I am going to be late. This will affect my degree mark and will reduce my salary for the rest of my life. I may end up paying £80,000 pounds over my lifetime for an extra twenty minutes in bed. I will get up in ten seconds. Nine. Eight. Seven. Six. Five. Four. Oh, no I won’t. Call it fifteen. Fourteen…”

Awake-me doesn’t approve of this, and has started setting little traps for in-bed-me to try and con him into getting up. First he moved the alarm clock away from the bed, but in-bed-me compensated by reaching over to it and turning it off anyway. Then awake-me decided to put a radio by the bed. The radio is harder to tune-out than an alarm clock and tends to wake me up fairly well over about an hour. In-bed-me very rarely remembered to turn on the radio, so awake-me put a note on the alarm clock to remind him. Now he’s moved the alarm clock so far from the bed that in-bed-me is forced to get out of bed just to hit snooze. (As in any war which does not involve America, there is honour and there are rules. In this case, in-bed-me is not allowed to turn off the alarm completely until I am fully awake, or at least have convinced myself I won’t be getting back into bed.) In-bed-me hasn’t come up with a counter-measure for this yet, and tends to lose interest and get up after about the third time he hits snooze.

So while Awake-me is winning the Battle Of Sloth*, thirsty-me is winning the Cola Wars. Sane-me enjoys the occasional drink of Coca-Cola, and knows the best place to get it is Morrison’s (or Netto). This being quite a way away, he always buys two or three bottles. Thirsty-me drinks them too quickly. Sane-me has tried dividing the cola into several smaller bottles, earmarking each one for a particular day. Thirsty-me, not being as honourable as in-bed-me, drinks them anyway, reasoning that each individual one won’t hurt, so therefore the whole lot can’t either. Sane-me tried getting cans instead of bottles, so that thirsty-me couldn’t just take a swig whenever he wanted. While thirsty-me didn’t drink as often then, he drank more when he did. The cans went only slightly slower than the bottles, and were rather more expensive. Now the Coca-Cola is kept in another room, so thirsty-me can’t reach it without going for a little walk. The Cola Wars seem to be at something of a truce at the moment.

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*I originally called this the Bed War, then the Battle Of The Bed, but then I decided that everyone loves Star Wars puns and gave it its current moniker.