Morning people run the world and night people entertain them.
Raise your hand if you are a morning person.
I see those hands.
If your are indeed one of the many who actively enjoy the morning time (I have never actually seen any of you as I am usually still asleep), then you are most likely reading this column while nursing a steaming cup of coffee that is no doubt subtly backlight by the early dawn light gently wafting in your kitchen window.
But if you are like me you are reading this delightfully amusing missive by the glaring light of noon while sipping coffee your beloved spouse brewed hours ago and eating a slice of last night’s pepperoni pizza.
I believe that Francis Scott Key, the writer of our beloved national anthem (which I would hear as a teenager late at night when the TV channels would go off the air, remember those days?), was a morning person.
The evidence for this is in the first line of the Star Spangled Banner, which says “O say can you see, by the dawn’s early light.”
If I had been on that British ship in Baltimore Harbor that day and had written this fantastic ode to our flag it would have gone like this, “O say can you see, by the hazy midmorning light as I stumble sleepily around the quarterdeck trying not to fall into the ocean before I can score a cup of grog and a rock-hard biscuit for breakfast.”
It’s not that I’m not a morning person. I’m simply a “night person.”
I’m tired of defining myself by something that I’m not. I don’t define myself as a man by saying “I’m not a woman” or as a married man by saying “I’m not single”, so why do I refer to myself as a night person by saying “I’m not a morning person”?
I’m proud of my identity as a night person. Some of the best writers and thinkers in history were night people.
I’m told that King David, writer of the sacred Psalms of the Bible, was a night person, and that his first foe Goliath was a morning person. This was one of the great “morning person-night guy” conflicts in history.
Score one for the night guys.
Also, I’m told that Hemmingway was a great night owl, and that he wrote A Farwell To Arms while frequenting Parisian all-night coffee shops. He was tagged as being a grumpy person by all of the old school editors of the time who insisted on meeting with him about his manuscripts at lunch time. This is why he spent his last years in Cuba. It’s way too hot there to go out in the daytime.
Incidentally, Paris, the city of light and culture, (the lights are tremendously important for a population that only comes out only at night) is the home base for us night guys, while I believe the home base for the morning people of the world was the old U.S.S.R.
Okay, that was too harsh.
I shall attempt to convey my feelings about the morning in the following parable…
Once upon a time in the far away kingdom of Snoozalot there was a prince born in the royal castle and the king and queen named him Prince Daddy.
This greatly confused the population of Snoozalot, but they were used to strange pronouncements from the castle, so they just went with it.
As Prince Daddy grew he enjoyed a great many naps and late mornings.
In the summer time when many in the royal household would arise early to watch the sunrise from the castle walls Prince Daddy would enjoy the sunset as he drank his royal chocolate milk or later, his royal coffee.
Then one day Prince Daddy, while proficiently playing bass guitar in a local band, spied Princess Morning Person across the performance hall and was captivated by her smoky voice, beautiful face and lovely green scarf she was wearing which reminded Prince Daddy of Audrey Hepburn in Breakfast at Tiffany‘s.
After a brief courtship the Prince and Princess married and greatly enjoyed each other’s company, though they could only communicate well between the hours of 9 am and 8 pm when Princess Morning Person turned into a pumpkin and had to go to bed.
Despite this difference, the Kingdom greatly rejoiced in this pairing.
And then Prince Daddy became an actual daddy, and his two princesses were no respecters of Price Daddy’s inability to think or make rational decisions in the morning. They would inexplicably be hungry at 7 am, forcing Prince Daddy to prepare food in his sleepy state.
"What vexes my children so that they desire to wake up a the ungodly hour of 6 am" he wondered over and over to himself.
But Prince Daddy greatly loved his royal family, and got up exactly at 7:30 am (after a great deal of coaxing from all of his princesses) and greet the day.
“Someday“, Prince Daddy would say to himself, “this will become easier to do.”
It’s up to you dear readers, to decide what parts of this parable is true and what indeed is a fairy tale.
Just don’t ask the night people to do it before 11 am.
