Rise and Shine

At 8am this morning I was on the phone with my father....I walked into my bedroom and discovered my wife still in bed, apparently abusing the snooze function on her alarm and making herself late for work in the process.

I asked my father to hold on for a second, leaned over my wife and said "rise and shine".

Then it happened.

I was holding the phone down by my leg but I could hear it....the morning nightmare from my youth...my father was singing at the top of his lungs:

"Rise and shine

And give God the glory, glory

Rise and shine

And give God the glory, glory

Rise and shine

And give God the glory, glory

Children of the Lord"

I am a morning person....now....but when I was a kid, I hated getting out of bed. My father would come upstairs, turn the lights on, pull the sheets off the bed all while singing that damn song, every verse, as loud as he could...clapping and dancing like a crazy person. My brother and I had awoken in Hell and my father was a demon from whichever circle it is that they torture children.

"The Lord said to Noah: there's gonna be a floody, floody

The Lord said to Noah: there's gonna be a floody, floody

Get those children out of the muddy, muddy

Children of the Lord"

So this morning, when I heard him singing it again, it sent shivers down my spine.....then I put him on speaker phone.

My wife was up and on her feet before he finished the second verse. Apparently her mom had used the same technique.

Now of course, I was actually thrilled to hear my father singing, as he is in a nursing home and can get depressed from time to time,....but over the course of the rest of our morning call, he burst out into that song at least four more times. I finally had to ask him to stop.

He said ok....and sang it again.