Mmpph.
Mrrph.
Unh.
What? A good morning?
A GOOD morning?!
Well let me tell you, this is a BAD morning! A lousy morning! This morning is trash from a dumpster! A dumpster on FIRE!
What? NO! Nothing’s wrong with me! I’m fine, it’s this lousy, low-rent morning that’s of no account.
But let me tell you about the mornings we had back in my day, and maybe you’ll understand…
Back in my day, a dawn was six seconds long. Back in my day, we all woke up early and stayed woke all day. Back in my day, sunset was as quick as a lick of your palm.
It was all because of one man, the big man, the tallest man we’d ever met. His name was…
…err…
You know, I don’t remember rightly what his name was. We’ll call him Ed Pool.
But it didn’t matter! It didn’t matter at all because of what his job was, and how clever he was at it.
Every morning of every day – no, no! – BEFORE every morning of every day, Ed Pool would sit up in his bed and do forty stretches.
Then Ed Pool would walk out into his kitchen and make some coffee. While it brewed, he would do eighty stretches.
Then Ed Pool would walk out into his garden and do one hundred and sixty stretches and on the one-hundred-and-sixtieth stretch he would LEAP high into the air and SWING his arm out and THROW the sun into the sky like a shot!
Like a SHOT!
And the sun would rise so high and so fast that dawn would be over in six seconds and all the birds woke up at once and everyone went to work and ate breakfast and things were as fine as could be as fast as you please.
Just like that!
And when the time for night came after the sun had hung in the sky all day long, Ed Pool would be holding his arm out when the sun came sizzling back down, and he would catch it in his big mitt. WHAM. Lights out. No fuss.
But one night before morning, Ed Pool was a bit distracted.
Maybe he was thinking about breakfast.
Maybe he was thinking about lunch.
Maybe he was thinking about his friends.
Maybe he was thinking about a girl he used to know.
Whatever it was, we don’t blame him for it. He was a busy man who did a lot for us. And if he once miscounted his stretches by Just. One. Stretch.
Well, who can hate a man for that?
But Ed Pool did his one-hundred-and-fifty-nine stretches and he LEAPT into the air and he SWUNG out his arm and he FELL down in his garden and held his back yelping like a coyote with a squirrel up its wrong end.
“DAMN. OW. MORE WORDS,” he said. “I’m bedridden! I’m stuck! Oh shit, now the sun’s stuck down here until my lazy, worthless, shiftless, no-account, no-good, altogether-rotten son gets here to fix things! MAN I hate that!”
So it was already a pretty late night by the time Ed Pool’s lazy, worthless, shiftless, no-account, no-good, altogether-rotten son answered the phone, listened to his father, drove over, and attended an earnest lecture on the principles of sun-management.
“Well how hard could it be?” he said. And he picked up the sun and burnt his fingers and yelped and CHUCKED that sun.
Well, morning was three seconds long that day. And the day was a week. The sun fell onto the roof of the sky and rolled into a gutter, and it wasn’t until the moon spent a week poking it with a stick that it came loose enough to roll out and fall back down, where Ed Pool’s lazy, worthless, shiftless, no-account, no-good, altogether-rotten son failed to catch it and it nearly fell into the ocean.
“Whoops,” he said. “Well, I’ll know better in the morning.”
And he went to bed. And so did everyone else, who was pretty tired because nobody expects to wait a week for bedtime.
Didn’t expect to wake up to midnight, either.
The birds woke up. The stores opened up. The kettles whistled and pans sizzled.
And they did it in pitch black because it was time for morning and morning wasn’t there at all. Folks burned their hands making bacon in the dead of night; they drove their cars past stop signs, they walked to school in total confusion because all the birds couldn’t remember what kind of bird they were and were making up new calls pretty much at random.
It was a MESS.
And it kept on being a mess for two weeks until Ed Pool’s ten thousandth phone call’s ring finally roused his lazy, worthless, shiftless, no-account, no-good, altogether-rotten son from his slumber.
“I thought it wasn’t morning yet,” he said, and Ed Pool reminded him forcibly that morning was his damned job and it wasn’t finished.
“Whoops,” he said. So he walked out into the garden and stretched once or twice and picked up the sun and burnt his fingers again and yelped and dropped it into the ocean.
By the time the sun got fished out it was dimmed down to a dull red, which matched the colour of Ed Pool’s lazy, worthless, shiftless, no-account, no-good, altogether-rotten son’s backside at that particular time, grown man or no. But Ed Pool got a mite carried away, and wouldn’t you know it his wrist got a crinkle in the doing that stopped him from ever throwing anything again.
Nowadays it’s all done with ropes and pulleys and stuff. And sure, it’s reliable. And sure, it’s modern. And sure, that half-dead sun does make a pretty sky while it’s being dragged up there.
But damnit! There was a time when breakfast was ready in six seconds!