“Lazarus has risen,” to quote my Dad when I finally awoke from slumber.

Chris and Pedro would often call my house when we were teenagers and get my Dad on the line. He would say that “Lazarus was still sleeping.”

Getting me up proved harder than some realized.

As a teen, my mom would often stand at the door and yell: “John! Wake up! You’ll be late for school!”

Years later, school changed to work. One of the main reasons why it was difficult to get me up was that while I was dreaming, I would incorporate the outside stimuli into my dream.

I’ve had several dreams of sanitation trucks and cement mixers backing up.

My Dad would call me and get no response. His work bench was in my room and he would be hammering and sawing and drilling and would tell me that I didn’t even move.

However, when he would put on easy listening on the radio with 30’s and 40’s music that actually got me up.

My brother Andrew would throw cold water in my face. This worked 50 percent of the time.

Once my brother Larry decided to clean out the closet and just dumped all the clothes on top of me. I woke up at about 5:30 p.m. and couldn’t move. It took a while to realize that all the clothes in the closet were on top of me.

My mom thought I was outside, playing.

Years later, my cat also tried getting me up.

One time my radio was going off at 6:30 a.m. I got up walked across the room and turned it off (having the radio across the room actually does help me get up).

Fifteen minutes later it went on again. Again I got up and turned it off.

On getting back into bed, my cat ran in, looked at me, meowed then jumped up and tapped the buttons on my alarm.

She was waking me up to feed her.

I was always a tense plane passenger, but realized if I broke night (stayed up 24 or more hours) that I could get on the plane, fall asleep and wake up at my destination.

This did prove useful a few times, but once while going to Puerto Rico, I awoke after two hours thinking that we were safely in the air only to find that we were still on the tarmac awaiting takeoff.

Yikes!

Pedro also saw me one evening at Yankee Stadium for a Yankees vs. Red Sox game.

The night before I was up 24 hours working and when I got to my bleachers seat, I just couldn’t help but take a little nap.

Pedro said that he fended off Boston fans who threw batteries at me during the game.

Am I glad that I didn’t get hit with a homer? Not sure how that would’ve been incorporated into a dream.