Wake Up Call

The past few months, I’ve had this game I like to play called “Pretend-we’re-at-Disney-World”. The game mostly consists of me and Carrie lying on the bed pretending to be asleep. I make a noise like a phone ringing and then reenact the typical Mickey Mouse wake-up call. Rubbing my eyes sleepily, I roll over and give Carrie a few quick shoves.

“Wake up,” I say. “It’s 4:30 in the morning and time to get ready to go to the Magic Kingdom.”

It’s at this point that Carrie breaks out of the role-playing and snaps at me…

I am NOT getting up at 4:30 in the morning while we’re at Disney World.

Finally, all those hours of preparatory role-playing paid off. When the alarm really did go off at 4:30 this morning, we jumped out of bed and were on our way.

In my pre-trip fantasy about this morning, I imagined a long lonely walk to the bus stop, where we would wait alone in the cold darkness for an empty bus to pull up and whisk us away to the MetroLink train.

In reality, the walk was loud with the sounds of rolling baggage on pavement. The bus stop was shared with a couple of other people and the bus was crammed so full of people that I wondered if we’d even be able to squeeze on with our luggage. The train ride was spent in separate seats. And when we arrived at the airport, I sprinted ahead of Carrie, my eyes set ahead on the ticket counter.

During my brisk walk through the terminal, I turned and caught sight of Carrie lagging behind and had to stop and laugh at myself. I’ve waited so long for this trip to get here that I figure I’d better slow down and actually take the time to enjoy it.