Dominoes 106c: Waking up, again

“Jervis! Jervis, dear, good heavens, you are still asleep?”

Jervis, lifted his head from between his pillows and opened one sleep-glued eye to see his mother, standing at the door of his room. Would she ever learn to knock? It was a good thing that he kept his labratory in the basement locked. Not that his mother would have understood anything of what he did there.

“Mom!” he whined, “I told you, I had an experiment that I ran all last night, and then I had to get up to take Suzy to her stupid choir practice.”

“Jervis!” his mother said, “Speak politely. Do your experiments really need to be run in the middle of the night?”

These certainly do, he thought to himself.

“And, anyway, I told you we were going to be having company over tonight, important people from your father’s work. Now get up and shower.” She looked around his room, “And do something about your room! For all I know they have a girl your age and she will want to come up to your room to play with you.”

‘Play?’ Jervis thought to himself. What am I, twelve years old? And no girl would even look at him. At least they never had. Not since that one incident… not if they had any brothers, anyway… or friends who were in on the local gossip.

“Whatever, Mom,” he said, rolling his legs out of bed and causing her to scowl at his state of dress. Or, undress. But her scowls never hurt him any, and she didn’t do any more than that, nowadays. He did need to keep on her good side, though, or she might get Dad to cut off the funds he needed for his experimental equipment, so he grabbed a towel and wrapped it around his waist before he went into the hallway toward the shower, yawning furiously. A shower would probably feel good…