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The Late Worm Posting Date: Feb 10 2008 6:38PM Benjamin Franklin famously said, “Early to bed and early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise.” Of course, Ben has been dead since 1790, so look where that piece of advice got him.
Ever since Mr. Franklin got all high-and-mighty on behalf of folks who can’t stay awake through Larry King’s second commercial break, people like me have had to fight the stigma of having late night biorhythms. For the record, just because a person enjoys staying up late, it doesn’t make him lazy.
When I was a teenager, my father used to think I was lazy because five or six times a week, I would stay in bed until after noon. He mentioned to me once or twice that it was his opinion that I may have done this because I was lazy and specifically, because I wanted to avoid cutting the grass which he believed was a morning activity.
Let me set the record straight. It wasn’t that I didn’t get out of bed until after noon because I was lazy. It was because I was lazy that I didn’t get out of bed until the afternoon. Big difference. I could have chosen any number of ways to express my teenage laziness. In fact, going to bed right after dinner could have been one. Ben Franklin would have loved me, but I chose not to take that option on account of it would have made me a Swiss-Chalet-eating LOSER. Instead, I preferred to sleep well past noon mostly because there was nothing good on television in the morning, while conversely, if you stayed up to watch the Late-Late Movie on City TV, you might just see some titties.
Ben Franklin hated night owls because, frankly, he was scared. He knew that folks who could stay up late but still make it into the office on time the next morning would soon rule the world. It’s not when you go to bed and when you wake up that matter; it’s how many hours come in between. It should be “Late to bed, early to rise, gives a man extra hours to do more stuff than the rest of you suckers.”
Stuff happens later in the evening – fun stuff, important stuff, West Coast stuff. In fact, going to bed early is an insult to everyone living to the west of you. Turning out the lights by 10:30 says, “I don’t care about the score of the Vancouver Canucks game” and “So what if there’s a giant earthquake and California falls into the Pacific Ocean killing millions, I’ll see the highlights during Good Morning America.” You early risers are a heartless bunch. A disaster like that and you sleep through it? Insensitive.
In addition to displaying a callous disregard for the value of human life and Western Conference NHL scores, early risers also miss out on the magic of late nights. I know all about the pleasure morning people take in coffee and sunrises, but no matter the wonders of the first glimmers of dawn, the spell soon gets broken by the mundane realities of the day. You have to go to work, the phone starts ringing, the kids need to get to school. Mornings are time for preparation and readiness which is another way of saying they are time for obligation.
Night is about freedom. The end only comes when you reach your own limits. You decide when the night ends. Plus, you can eat anything you want. Try eating a taco or drinking a Heineken at 6:30 am. People will think you’re a college student. Consume those thing in the middle of the night and it’s all fair game. Plus, if you want a waffle and orange juice at 2:30 in the morning you can fill your boots. That’s freedom, baby.
Late nights are about outlasting the world and achieving the wisdom that only looking back on the experiences of the day can bring. The early bird may get the worm, but the late bird gets freedom, wisdom and a little soft-core porn on television. Pretty easy choice, really. |
