Go To Sleep

It is that time of year, warm one day and cold the next. The old bio-computer seems to be reflecting the weather with thoughts that do not have the energy to flow. Which is to say that it feels like there are ice crystals in the brain inhibiting the creative spark. That is not much of an excuse for not posting, but it is the best I can do at the moment. When I suffer from writer’s block I usually try to write my way out of it. I sit down and record meandering thoughts until an idea I can work with finally emerges. Not surprisingly, my efforts are interrupted by my need to support myself and by my need to relax after putting in a days work at my place of employment. During those moments of relaxation I usually read in an effort to supplement what I consider to be the mind pap served up by television. A lady at work added to my reading by loaning me a book she was sure that I would enjoy. The book was so short that I was able to read it during one of my breaks at work.

The title of the book is “Go the fuck to sleep” by Adam Mansbach. It is very cleverly laid out like a children’s book. By that I mean it is written in simple verse and contains the illustrations one would expect to find in a children’s book. As the title suggests, however, it is very much a book for adults. It is a hilariously funny expression of a father’s frustration as he tries to get his two year old to settle down for the night. It is very rare, no matter how good a book may be, that I will say I wish I had written it, but this book struck that chord with me. I might add that it is a chord that will resonate with all parents. It also had me thinking.

We humans have a distinct disadvantage in the dark and an instinctive fear of things we cannot see. Every parent knows that children fear the dark. Furthermore, the thoughts that give comfort to an adult do not necessarily give comfort to a child. Thus our efforts to allay a child’s fear often go for naught until the child is old enough to understand why we take comfort in the thoughts we are trying to teach. A good example of this is a bedtime rhyme often recited:

“Now I lay me down to sleep.

I pray the Lord my soul will keep.

If I die before I wake

I pray the Lord my soul will take.”

Forget the theology. Children instinctively know that death is not a good thing. They may not know what it is, but they know we try to protect them from it. They soon learn that we do this because dead people are no longer here. Since children want to be here the thing very much on their minds when they hear this rhyme is why they might die in their sleep. Their vivid imaginations then conjure up images of monsters under the bed or lurking in the dark. An unexplained noise is very likely to have them darting into your bedroom to seek your protection. Fortunately for me, my parents did not recite this rhyme to me at bedtime. I do not recall more than one or two times when I was afraid to sleep.

The thing that kept me awake was restlessness. I wanted to be a part of whatever was going on. The one ploy that allowed me to get out of bed was having pee. There was an implied threat there. I say implied because I never said I would wet the bed, nor would I intentionally do it. There was also the excuse of getting a drink of water, but that could be problematical. Timing is everything. If I had already climbed out of bed to pee my parents did not want to give me the excuse I needed to get up again to pee. Although they did not exactly limit the number times I could get up to pee, they had a way of discouraging it as a ploy. After one or two times one of my parents, usually my mother, would accompany me to the bathroom. At that point it was put up or shut up. I had to demonstrate that I really had to pee. Obviously I was older than two when all of this was taking place, but the bedtime battle lasts well beyond the toddler stage.

First published in macsbackporch.fictionforall.com on May 18, 2011