At 3:30 p.m., I yawned.
I must be tired, I thought to myself. I’ll make sure to get to bed early tonight.
That’s the plan – every day at 3:30 p.m.
For me, “getting to bed early” means prior to 11 p.m. And, it rarely happens. Here’s
why:
• TV.
To the regular reader of this column (yes, you), you must think I watch television 24/7. I don’t – know what 24/7 means. But I think it means “a lot” from how they say it on TV all the time.
For some reason, possibly jaundice, I can’t seem to go to sleep if I find something interesting on TV, or not interesting, or if the TV is on, or has the possibility of being on.
Let me give you a recent example. The other night, my wife and I watched a movie until 9:30 p.m. She then went to bed.
I turned to the channel guide to see what else was on, with the plan being that I would watch something for 30 minutes, then go to bed at the decent hour of 10 p.m.
But the movie “Risky Business” was playing on AMC. I haven’t seen it in about nine months. Perhaps Joel cracks the glass egg over Guido the Killer Pimp’s head in the AMC version of the movie, I thought. (Spoiler alert: He doesn’t).
So I stayed up two extra hours watching a movie I’ve already seen 25 times.
Then I watched two episodes of “Simon & Simon,” and found myself going to bed at 1:30 a.m.
Did I really need to watch “Risky Business” again? Yes. I rather enjoyed it.
Did I really need to watch two episodes of “Simon & Simon”? No. One would have sufficed. Or none.
• Fear.
I’m not scared of the dark, or the bogeyman, or sleep, or of zombies. I’m fearful something interesting will happen after I go to sleep.
I share this fear with both of my sons, apparently. And most twoyear-old boys.
There’s a great Richard Pryor routine where he claims his father had an 11 p.m., curfew when he was a teen. He would go out and ask the other teens what they were doing. “Waiting on 11:30,” they replied, adding, profanely, that things really were going to start happening at 11:30.
I don’t know what exciting “things” I’m expecting to happen after I go to bed. I’m 50+ years old and live in Homerville, Georgia. Maybe I’m fearful I’ll miss out on a riveting Nick Saban/Deion Sanders commercial or an ambulance will drive by my house.
• Hunger.
I find it impossible to watch “Dazed and Confused” for the 22nd time without a snack to wash it down. And, I find it difficult to go to sleep on a full, or empty stomach. My kitchen is all too agreeable to find such snacks at 10:45 p.m. – usually snacks that belong to another person.
“Who opened my bag of Doritos and ate half the bag?,” my youngest son inquired.
“I don’t know,” I responded, discreetly nodding toward the dog.
“What’s that orange salty stuff around your lips?,” he asked.
“Toothpaste?,” I sheepishly answered.
• Procrastination.
I simply prefer to put off unpleasant or difficult things. Sometimes, I’ve found that if you put off things for long enough, they go away on their own, like a stray dog or relative that you refuse to feed.
So far, this theory hasn’t worked with the need for sleep, or writing a weekly column. But I’m no quitter. I’ll keep not trying.
• Len Robbins is the editor of The Clinch County News. He can be reached at lrobbins@clinchcounty news
