When you’re nine or ten, staying up all night is an adventure. The silence of the house, trying to read lips on a small black and white television flickering shadows on the wall behind you as rubber monsters crush Tokyo yet once again, the thrill of being awake through the “witching hour”, even when you didn’t know when that hour was.
When you’re in your late teens and early twenties, staying up all night is a matter of course. Whether you’re cramming for the exam, dancing the night away or finding some other way to party, the night time is simply the better part of the day. Sleeping can be done in fits the next day or the day after that, as long as you can grab an hour or two here and there, no big deal.
When you’re living in the middle ages, staying up all night is a particularly severe form of punishment. This is what happens to bad little boys who still eat the spicy foods they could easily handle twenty years ago when they could sleep the entire night without having to make a midnight trip. Heartburn is a self-inflicted inducement to show up at work with bloodshot eyes and an almost vampiric need for coffee.
The rubber monsters on the old black and white are now replaced by selections on cable TV. No longer content with family fair and 1950’s science fiction, the late night viewing is aimed much more for the adults who can’t stay up to watch in the first place. In a strange continuity, the rubber has turned to silicone, but there are amazing similarities.
My last night of torture was the direct result of a meal of bacon, ham and eggs much too close before bed. I understand that there are those vegetarians who will say that I got what I deserved from such unhealthy fare, I’ll only nod and acquiesce the point. I still had a small bon fire in the bottom of my throat the next day at work, but I was so wiped out from my heart-burn induced insomnia that even the burning couldn’t keep me awake at my computer. I have no idea what I typed, what code I wrote, or what I may have said while on the phone, but I was still employed the next day, so I must have done alright on autopilot.
Pouring coffee down my throat probably didn’t help the indigestion, but the artificial consciousness made the burn worth the effort.
When I got home, I went to bed and slept soundly and deeply.
Except for a little midnight trip, anyway……
Wednesday, February 28, 2007
Wednesday, February 14, 2007
11 Seconds
I’m sure you’ve heard the now famous statistic that every 11 seconds men think about <<<>gasp<>>> S*E*X*.
Well, 25 years ago, maybe there was some basis for that, I can’t really remember, it was too long ago and I was thinking about something at the time. I know I was, I just can’t remember what.
These days, my thoughts run more along the lines of my right front tire, my diet and my checkbook. What do all of these things have in common? Not one of them is balanced.
I have arrived at a stage of my life where I continually contemplate the world and the hereafter. It seems like every time I walk into a room these days, I stop and wonder “what in the world am I here after?” There’s even an entire checklist I need repeat each morning before I go to work, and I still find certain important elements are forgotten: keys proudly taking the number one position.
I’ve recently taken to wearing a black baseball-style cap, mostly because I have nothing else to warm the top of my head since having been abandoned by my traitorous hair. The cap has been known to take a day off as I blithely head out the door, as has my ID badge (the one I need to get in the office), my laptop, my wallet and my full coffee cup.
If I had the ability to think every 11 seconds, which is becoming less and less promising, such time would be better spent on more mundane things, like the stuff I get paid to do at work, for example.
When I first became a programmer, I would wake up every morning running code in my head: this equals that on these conditions and looping back over to here. Lately the only thing going through my head every morning is the same prayer, “God, get me through this day and I SWEAR I’ll go to bed earlier tonight!” It’s absolutely sincere when I mutter it, but somehow, about 9 or 10 that night, there’s the news and there’s just a little thing I want to do, like take out the trash or wash the dogs or overhaul an engine.
A friend of mine told me about a book she was reading that “really showed the thought processes of a guy.” I asked to borrow it assuming that it would be a series of blank pages. I don’t actually have thought processes, I have degrees of creative worrying and bouts of productive depression, but nothing I would call “thoughts”.
After 19 years of marriage, my wife has stopped asking me what I’m thinking, and that is such a relief. As a guy (especially when dating) you learn to make that stuff up on the fly. You can’t say “nothing”, because she’ll think you just don’t want to share. Not true. The truth is that there were NO THOUGHT PROCESSES going on at that moment.
I am discovering the mid-forties haven’t changed that, but now fewer and fewer people are expecting me to have a thought in my head at any given time. I suppose that’s insulting in a way, but it’s so much easier than trying to come up with something deeply profound with no warning.
So, where was I? Oh, yes, every 11 seconds. I can’t even think every 11 seconds anymore, so it’s my intention to save up those rare synaptic connections for the really important things.
I’ll know them when they come to me. I just hate to waste the energy trying to come up with a list.
Well, 25 years ago, maybe there was some basis for that, I can’t really remember, it was too long ago and I was thinking about something at the time. I know I was, I just can’t remember what.
These days, my thoughts run more along the lines of my right front tire, my diet and my checkbook. What do all of these things have in common? Not one of them is balanced.
I have arrived at a stage of my life where I continually contemplate the world and the hereafter. It seems like every time I walk into a room these days, I stop and wonder “what in the world am I here after?” There’s even an entire checklist I need repeat each morning before I go to work, and I still find certain important elements are forgotten: keys proudly taking the number one position.
I’ve recently taken to wearing a black baseball-style cap, mostly because I have nothing else to warm the top of my head since having been abandoned by my traitorous hair. The cap has been known to take a day off as I blithely head out the door, as has my ID badge (the one I need to get in the office), my laptop, my wallet and my full coffee cup.
If I had the ability to think every 11 seconds, which is becoming less and less promising, such time would be better spent on more mundane things, like the stuff I get paid to do at work, for example.
When I first became a programmer, I would wake up every morning running code in my head: this equals that on these conditions and looping back over to here. Lately the only thing going through my head every morning is the same prayer, “God, get me through this day and I SWEAR I’ll go to bed earlier tonight!” It’s absolutely sincere when I mutter it, but somehow, about 9 or 10 that night, there’s the news and there’s just a little thing I want to do, like take out the trash or wash the dogs or overhaul an engine.
A friend of mine told me about a book she was reading that “really showed the thought processes of a guy.” I asked to borrow it assuming that it would be a series of blank pages. I don’t actually have thought processes, I have degrees of creative worrying and bouts of productive depression, but nothing I would call “thoughts”.
After 19 years of marriage, my wife has stopped asking me what I’m thinking, and that is such a relief. As a guy (especially when dating) you learn to make that stuff up on the fly. You can’t say “nothing”, because she’ll think you just don’t want to share. Not true. The truth is that there were NO THOUGHT PROCESSES going on at that moment.
I am discovering the mid-forties haven’t changed that, but now fewer and fewer people are expecting me to have a thought in my head at any given time. I suppose that’s insulting in a way, but it’s so much easier than trying to come up with something deeply profound with no warning.
So, where was I? Oh, yes, every 11 seconds. I can’t even think every 11 seconds anymore, so it’s my intention to save up those rare synaptic connections for the really important things.
I’ll know them when they come to me. I just hate to waste the energy trying to come up with a list.
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