As a courtesy to one another, my wife and I typically leave a light on in the bedroom for whichever one of us goes to bed last. (I'm almost always in bed before her.) We have a clip light in a window behind a curtain which serves this purpose pretty well without casting so much light into the room that it keeps us from going to sleep. Those curtains are a fairly heavy material, so they also block and diffuse the morning sunlight pretty well.
So when I woke up, I was surprised to see that it was already daylight, and that Teri was up and out of the room already, to the point that she'd neatly pulled the sheet and covers up on her side of the bed. The dog was out of the room, too. I couldn't figure out how I'd slept so much later than she had. I knew I hadn't heard her alarm, and figured she hadn't just gotten up and gone out to the sofa during the night - as each of us tends to do out of courtesy for the other when we're having trouble sleeping - as she wouldn't have made her side of the bed in that case. Finally I rolled over to look at the clock, and was shocked to see I'd slept past noon. I didn't panic over being late for work, as it didn't register that today was a work day. But finally everything coalesced into an accurate picture of reality: it was only a little past midnight.
And, of course, the light in the room was from the light I'd left on for her when I'd gone to bed 90 minutes before. I'd apparently fallen asleep quickly and soundly. From now on, she's going to have to make due with the light from the hallway which, on the other side of a closed door, should keep me from having such a complete - or at least completely misinterpreted - awakening.
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