Good Morning, Quint. We're Gonna Need a Bigger Boat.

My family was never a “good morning” sort of family. Growing up, I was arguably the only morning person of the five children. The other four were typically somewhere just barely past the line between sleepwalking and being awake. I wasn’t exactly chipper at 5:45 a.m., but I was usually slightly more coherent. But no matter what state of mind we were in, I don’t ever remember saying good morning to my siblings, unless it was in a sarcastic sort of way, i.e. when a sibling has woken up cranky and it’s your duty to subject them to a ridiculously perky “good morning, sunshine!!”

I never liked being rushed in the morning before school, so I would usually get up with enough time to shower, get dressed, and have a cup of coffee and breakfast while reading the comics. Since I was up earlier, my dad was usually still home by the time I sat down to eat. I don’t think we ever said “good morning” to each other. It wasn’t rude, neither was ignoring the other, I think it was more just an unspoken acknowledgment that it would be ridiculous to speak at that ungodly hour of day, as well as something else…which brings me to my point.

I don’t understand why some people feel the need to say “good morning” to everyone they live with every single morning. At several points in my life now I’ve been in situations where I have a roommate who feels the need to say “good morning” every morning. And for some reason, it really really bugs me.

Now that I’m thinking about it, maybe it’s not the “good morning” itself but the person saying it. When you’re visiting with someone and you wake up and go into the kitchen for breakfast and your host says “good morning,” that’s different. That I can deal with. When you go into work and people say “good morning,” that’s also acceptable. And I’ve never minded if my mom says “good morning” to me every day, but then again, she is my mother.

But in other situations, it gets to a point where it just feels entirely forced. There’s this feeling that they’re only saying “good morning” because they think that’s what they’re supposed to do when they see someone in the morning.

I still get up relatively early on a daily basis. I usually sit on the couch and work on my class readings while everything is still quiet. Every morning, my roommate wakes up around 9:30 or 10, shuffles through the living room on the way to the kitchen, and says “good morning.” And it drives me crazy. Not only do we live in the same apartment, we share a room. Our beds are five feet away from each other. We know when the other is awake. We don't need to call attention to it.

But still, she feels the need to constantly acknowledge that we’re either both in the apartment or that one of us is leaving the apartment. She goes to the gym most mornings. She says “good morning,” she eats, she says “see ya,” and she goes to the gym. She gets back after about an hour and says “hey.” Every. Day. Just because we’re in the same room doesn’t mean we have to say something to each other. The other day, she came and went about four times in as many hours, and she said "hi" to me every time she came back into the apartment.

I tolerate this on most days. But today…today… the mixing of pet peeves.

I don't like when people talk to me while I'm watching TV or a movie. My sisters and mother can attest to this.

We were talking about the movie Jaws in class last night and, having not seen it in a while, I really wanted to watch it after our discussion. I don’t own it, nor do I currently have the money to buy it. So imagine my joy upon seeing that it was on TV at 9:30 this morning.

Do you know why people watch Jaws? They watch it for the suspense. They watch it for those two notes of music that will make anyone tense up. They watch it to see Sheriff Brody react to that first up-close look at the shark – the expression on his face, his slow backtrack into the cabin, cigarette dangling loosely from his mouth. THEY WATCH IT TO HEAR BRODY TELL QUINT “WE’RE GONNA NEED A BIGGER BOAT.”

Did I get to hear that this morning? No. No, I did not. If I hadn't seen the movie before, I wouldn't know that they were going to need a bigger boat. Do you know why I wouldn't know? Because someone walked in from the gym, saw me sitting in the exact same position she left me in, and felt the need to say hi to me, barely an hour after saying “good morning” and “see ya.”

As a comparison, my other roommate woke up not long after the first came back from the gym. The "good morning" conversation between roommate two and I:

R2: Jaws?
Me: Yep.


Maybe I just don't like the forced pleasantries because I feel like I have to respond, when really I just want to read/type/watch TV. I don't need someone to know what I'm doing all the time, and I certainly don't need to know what the people I live with are doing at every moment of the day.

Maybe...I'm a jerk.