My wife gave me permission to start waking her up in the morning. At first this announcement came without restriction. Turns out, nobody appreciates being tickled awake. C'mon, nothing wakes a peacefully slumbering individual up better than a furious and unexpected tickle massacre.

The following are three other ways Christine has forbidden that I wake her up in the morning by: crying like a baby, vigorously blowing in her ear, or holding my face centimeters away from her face and waiting for her to open up her eyes.

Christine's morning request to yours truly came as a direct result of one thing Christine has never been able to do — actually wake up in the morning. Sleep doctors, or somnologists, as we call them in the biz, would lose sleep of Christine's curious slumbering patterns. Have you ever heard the phrase, sleeps like a log? Christine sleeps like a petrified sequoia.

She also refuses to use an actual alarm clock. Instead she uses her cell phone. Her alarm tone is this weird sonic pinging sound that drives me crazy.

To me, at the butt crack of dawn, it might as well be the sound of a cuddly kitten haphazardly falling into a running garbage disposal. I wake up instantly every time I hear the incessant sonic beeping. But not Christine, she always keeps sleeping in the bed, motionless like a blob and otherwise dead to the world.

I am great at waking up, and more importantly staying up, in the morning. I figured out long ago the easiest way to wake up is to stand up as soon as you open your eyes. It's pretty hard to fall asleep while standing up. Each morning, I'm talking the second my tiny, beady little eyes open, I rise slowly and methodically to my feet like a vampire emerging from his coffin.

Unlike Christine, I use an actual alarm clock. Unlike a cell phone, an alarm clock is dependable all the time — unless the power goes out, it's daylight saving time or a cat (maliciously) knocks out the plug from the outlet in the middle of the night.

I don't keep my alarm clock near the bed. I keep my alarm clock exactly nine steps away from my bed (and I just went upstairs and counted to make sure). My reasoning is if I can stand up and walk nine paces I won't be able or tempted to fall back asleep.

The real secret of my arsenal is yet to come. I don't have my alarm clock set on a pleasant radio station. A lot of people have their favorite musical preference tuned in on their alarms clocks, but that's an amateur mistake.

Look, I love classic rock. If anyone who knows me had to guess, they would say that's what my alarm clock is set to in the morning. At face value this logic seems fair. After all, nothing would normally get my blood pumping more than the chorus of "Rock You Like a Hurricane."

But if a song comes on the radio that I like I know exactly what I would fall prey to. I would say to myself, I am just going to close my eyes for just a few minutes and listen to the rest of this song about rocking things like a hurricane.

And before you know it, I am even later to work than I normally am.

I have classical music playing in the morning. I am talking full blast classical music. Nothing rubs me the wrong way more than classical music. It's so old, disgusting and boring; there aren't even any lyrics or any songs about rocking something like a significant weather event.

One might think the soothing tones of early morning classical music would be enough to bore me back to bed rest, but it has the exact opposite effect on me. Instead I defiantly march across the room to turn the dreaded melodies off.

Sooner or later I will teach Christine the ancient ways of waking up on time, but for now I need to decide how I will wake her up tomorrow morning.

I'm thinking about using the smoke detector.

To contact Will E Sanders email him at [email protected]. To learn more about Will E Sanders, to read past columns or to read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.