The Wakeup Call

Dad always went to bed earlier than Mom did. He had to get up so much earlier than she did, but Dad also liked to listen to the baseball game when the Pirates played. Often he would take his portable radio to the bedroom and listen to the game before he fell to sleep. When the game was over, he would turn the radio off and slip it beneath the bed and then go to sleep.

One morning after the ballgame, Mom was wakened and scared by a male voice in the bedroom saying, “Good morning!” She sprung from the bed, thinking that someone was in her bedroom, but when she settled down, she found that Dad had either fallen asleep before the game was over or that he had not shut the radio off before he slid it under the bed.

This was a time when many radio stations didn’t broadcast all night long, but would sign off at midnight until the following morning at six a.m. Mom had gone to bed after the station had signed off for the night and hadn’t known the radio was still on. She did find out at six a.m. the following morning.

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One of my parent’s bedroom windows was at the front of the first floor of their house that looked out onto the walk that led to the front door. My brother heard Mom inside, the blinds were closed. The window was open with an adjustable sliding screen in place. He leaned close and yelled in the window, “Whoo-oo-oop!”

Mom had been in a stage of undress. She screamed and dropped to her knees, whipping off the bedspread and covering herself.

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Mom was on one of her frugal kicks and made just one hamburger for each of us. She had cheese slices, tomato, onion, and lettuce as fillers for the sandwiches and for our bellies. The meat plate was passed around and each of us took one. We each stacked the extras on our burgers. All of us had started eating; even Mom had taken a bite of hers. It was then she saw the “extra” meat patty on the plate.

“Who didn’t get their burger?” she asked. It was then she realized that she was so intent on building her burger with extras, she forgot to add her hamburger patty to her sandwich.