My Daughter, The Velociraptor

December 2, 2007 by Dave.

I realized this week that my daughter will grow up to be a coffee addict. Since I’ve known her, Sophia has been notorious to wake up unless on her own terms. When she’s well rested, she’s up and about and bouncing around my room. When she’s not ready to wake up, it is a slow chore to get her to move. I admit I am just like this myself—unless I have an urgent schedule, a job related thing, or my bed is on fire, I find myself actually waking up anywhere from 20 minutes to an hour and a half after my alarm has gone off. Sophia’s mom is worse than me. She is pretty much a lunatic bitch unless she gets some coffee in her after a good night’s sleep. Well, Sophia is heading towards the dark side with her mother.

Thursday, I was trying to get to Sophia’s school before she got to her nap time. I was five minutes to late and she was asleep. I usually try to wake her up gently over a few minutes. Her teacher however got a great response the other day by waking her up then planting her on her feet. I was actually surprised to see it work so I figured I’d try with her supervision. We started wake her up and then she emitted this groan. I’m not really sure you can call it a groan, but it’s the closest thing in human origin that it might sound like. Honestly what came out of her closed mouth and gritted teeth sounded either like a wounded jaguar or a velociraptor catching its prey. While I might be reaching with the velociraptor analogy, I’m not far off on the big cat. One of my distinctive memories from my adolescent years was a friend of mine up the street who had—at the time—an unspayed cat in heat; it sounded exactly like Sophia did that Thursday, except an octave lower.

I got her up and out of the classroom and to may car and it wasn’t until about half a mile from her house that she stopped making that noise. Hearing that sound coming from her as she struggled to wake up, I knew that this child would be forever doomed once she has to get to classes on time.

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