Bedtime

I am in dire need of something I once had against my will.

Nope not what you’re thinking, I’ve never had that against my will, and I’ve never had it in the way in which your perverted mind is suggesting. I’m talking about a bedtime. Now I will admit that one of the “Top 10 Phrases Brett Hates” is the following or any variation thereof: “It’s past my bedtime.” But I need one.

One of my most distinct memories of my childhood was from, oh I don’t know, about 6 years old or so. I had fought a losing (as usual) battle with my mom about when I was going to bed. So there I lay, staring at the ceiling, huffing (no, not from a can) and puffing about every twenty seconds so as to make my dissatisfaction perfectly clear to the exactly zero people who were listening to me.

Then something came over me – this feeling that said, “Not only are you invincible, you are also stealthy.” This is particularly interesting, considering the fact that the word “stealth” and its closely-related adjectives, adverbs, and Chrysler vehicle names would not become a part of the common American vernacular for another six years or so. Nevertheless, I thought it and you can’t prove otherwise.

I was particularly curious to learn “the Secret,” which I and every other six-year old kid in the greater Mid-South area new that our parents were keeping from us. “The Secret” was the subject matter of all of the television programs that aired on all three channels (PBS didn’t count) after 9:00 PM central. It was obviously “the Secret” that managed to continue suppressing us six-year-olds into the lower caste of society. I wanted to learn this secret… not just for the sake of knowing, but to help my 6YO brothers and sisters break the shackles of this wrongful tyranny and breathe the air of freedom that had so long been but a dream.

Not really. I just wanted to know what was on TV after 9:00.

It was in this pursuit that I once ventured out of the room after bedtime. As my brother snored loudly and the televised laughter of the bourgeoisie wafted down the hall from the den, I quietly peeled the covers from my airplane pajamas. I placed my left big toe on the three-quarter-inch high shag carpet, and slowly rolled the rest of my foot onto the ground. I was facing the ceiling and wall to my left, balancing myself against the bed with my right arm as I slowly rolled my right leg out of the bed and gradually righted myself in the darkness.

I crouched and gently lowered myself onto all fours. With a painstakingly deliberate cadence, I advanced left hand, left knee, right hand, then right knee with the corners of my face stretched back as though it made my crawling tippy-toe experiment somewhat quieter. Before rounding the corner where the light from a distant fixture entered the room by the side of the dresser, I stretched my neck out to scout the hall for unwanted eyes. Then my advance continued - one hand, one knee at a time.

As I neared my destination, my head could sense the waiting danger as the sound of laughter from the television began sounding less like that of a faraway room and more like that of a room in which I was present. A voice I would later recognize as Johnny Carson was apparently talking to his doctor, and everyone, including my folks, thought it was funny. My dad, who never laughed, laughed. So did Mom, but only after Dad did.

I continued listening to this man talk, and continued to be perplexed. I stared at the wall as though I was asking it a question, then realized that there was no secret – at least no secret to me. It was, in fact, the adults on whom the joke was being played. They were the ones who were laughing at something that wasn’t funny. I could relax in the knowledge that I obviously was more intellectually advanced than the grown-upper class. Less impressively, I could return to my bed with the satisfaction of a job well done.

As my upper teeth gently bit my lower lip (this was well known to have reduced the noise resulting from carpet-to-footy-pajama friction), I began to retreat to my room in reverse. About five feet down the hall, I began to realize that I was obviously superior to my parents. After all, I had managed to foil the bedtime conspiracy and prove its impotence all in one night. As it occurred to me how stupid my parents were and how obviously gifted I was, I spontaneously laughed through my closed lips and created a significant disturbance. My eyes grew more round as I realized what I had done and began to fear the wrath of an angry, and somewhat un-entertained, parent.

I knew to run, but I was frozen. This remained unchanged for the five seconds it took for my four feet, eleven inches-tall mother to arrive towering over me.

I looked up as though I might have some glimmer of an excuse for why I was crawling down the hall, then I made a run (er, crawl) for it, sure I could escape punishment simply by beating her to my room. She didn’t punish me, as she was certain that, at six, my aims could have been little more than mischievous.

Lucky for her, she didn’t know how much I knew.

I really should get some sleep.