Or; Why I am liable to snap off your head if you so much as rob me of 15 minutes of sleep, regardless of the interruption or the interrupter. I'll give you a hint: it's not personal.
Firstly, it is a matter of proportion. Do a little simple math. Fifteen minutes to someone who has had seven hours of sleep is a mere pittance; fifteen minutes cut out of a four-hour night of sleep is a significant chunk. It's true we choose to sleep at late hours, but it's largely a matter of productivity--my day may be in full swing by 9:00, but my productivity doesn't peak until after midnight. Therefore, if I am to accomplish in a timely matter what I need to do, a late night is the way to do it.
Moreover, though, it is a matter of principle. Daily, with each time we hit snooze, we are reminded of the fact that we have had to accommodate ourselves to a schedule foreign to our own inner clocks. But we do it. We do. We may hit snooze a couple more times than you disgusting Mary Poppins types, but in time, we do wake up. Five times a week, in most cases. Often, we are not ready to go with skips in our steps and songs in our throats. That's just too much to ask.
And in light of that inconvenience, if we prefer to take a semi-autonomous stand of when within the timeframe of what my ex-military aunt calls "zero dark thirty" we arise, let us. It's the only retribution we have in a world that asks us to be fully functional several hours before we reach our peak of productivity.
"I'll rise," says one of my favorite Garfield cartoons, "but I won't shine."
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And on a different note, here's a Windows Vista paradox: Vista will ask for permission umpteen times to run a program that you specifically initiated with the intention of running, but will take it upon itself to reboot and install updates without being prompted or given permission and regardless of any documents you had running...
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