100 ways to slightly improve your life #24

24: Start a Saturday morning with some classical music – it sets the tone for a calm weekend.

When I read this, I had flashback memories of being woken on Saturday mornings to The University of Michigan fight song “Hail to the Victors” which Father played at highest volume on the hi-fi to rouse us sleeping-in types for “there’s-work-to-be-done” yardwork. Oh the horror.[1] The irony of this recommendation is Monday through Friday I do wake up to classical music. My alarm goes off at 5AM to play the prelude to “Das Rheingold” – but I shut it off on Saturdays to allow myself to sleep in some. [2]

Father wakes every morning to a Sousa march, which some classical music radio station with a morbid sense of humor plays every 715PM, thus carrying on his lifelong tradition of being awakened by a football half-time show. In our daily calls he reports which Sousa march was played that morning. They all sound alike to me and sooner I’d eat rats at Tewkesbury than listen to one, let alone at 715AM. Whatever floats your goat I suppose.

When I was in medical school I lived in a house in with other students and we lived next door to a family that liked to party loud and long into the night every Friday. In neighborly reciprocation I played first thing on Saturday morning (at high volume) the finale of Act II of “Aida”, which I hoped they appreciated as much as I enjoyed their Friday night tunes.

I listen to a lot of classical music as it is so hearing more the first thing on weekends isn’t for me. What I do first thing Saturday mornings is look about to see if Someone and Harper are there or did they go in the night to sleep in The Dragon Room (a.k.a. the guest room) where they can sleep-in knowing I will get up at 5AM anyway with or without the music of Herr Wagner.

It is the primal scream of children throughout Time we will turn into our parents and I am no exception that every Saturday morning when I could be sleeping in or lounging about in my jammies I start doing ‘there’s-work-to-be-done’ chores right away while waiting the slug-a-beds to wake. You bet your flaming knickers I do not play The U of M fight song or Sousa or anything else. Can you imagine?

[1] Thanks to this Ludovico-like technique I dislike the tune to this day.

[2] Someone’s alarm is a loud beeping continual foghorn that comes on suddenly and sounds like a ship announcing it’s just been torpedoed and get to the lifeboats as soon as possible.