Out of Practice

I realized recently that I have quit waking up at 5:24 every morning. Not sure when I began sleeping straight through, but it took me at least five years to unlearn that habit, because as recently as last summer, I was still waking up briefly, looking at the clock and then going back to sleep.

Why 5:24? Because for the quarter-century that I taught school, that's when I would get up. After a few years, I no longer awakened to the sound of the alarm clock; instead, I awakened before the alarm clock and would switch it off at 5:23, getting up a few seconds later. And for five years after I quit teaching, I still woke up at 5:24.

It strikes me as odd that it took my internal clock five years to accept my new schedule...