Daily writing prompt

What are your morning rituals? What does the first hour of your day look like?

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The first hour of my day looks like my middle school alarm clock. A small black technical thing with more dials than buttons and an always tepid connection to the radio station I preferred. The snooze button existed as a long oval on the top, where you would slam your hand over and over only to just barely miss it. If the distorted blaring didn’t wake the whole house then surely the sound of my hand slamming against the clock, the side table, the clock again, the wall, would. Inevitably I would resign myself to getting up anyway, stumbling with my eyes half closed through a morning routine of a very middle school sort. I would smooth my hair but almost never comb it despite the rats nests forming on the undersides. It was long and thick and heavy, combing it was a daily battle I choose to put off. On the way to school I walked with a boy who carried a bat half way up the street before ditching it along the curb where he would pick it in the afternoon. We knew this was because of dogs but we poked fun at him anyway as he swung the bat like a major league star, like a pimp cane, like he would take out any threat – even us, a group of not quite teenage girls giggling and laughing and cussing as we made our way down the street. This is how we’re made a threat, existing, in groups, loudly, boldly awkward. Suddenly we’re loitering, disrupting. Suddenly we’re property, of the boy with the bat and his friends.