Contrary to what well-meaning friends tell me, I’m old. At least in my head, I’m old. This belief is what you get when you’re raised by people who grew up during The Great Depression.
I hate staying up late, which might seem like an odd thing for a writer who worked so many years on the graveyard shift to say, but I do.
THE Great Depression.
So last night, I stayed up late. Too late. Stupid o’clock late. And all because… I love baseball… and because now, I live on the East Coast. And now I know why New York is “the city that doesn’t sleep”.
Let me explain.
I spent the first 61 years of my existence living in and around the city of Los Angeles. Yeah, palm trees, year-round sun, the beach just a few minutes away, but all that takes a back seat to what I learned was, as I grew older, the best reason that
living on the West Coast is living on the Best Coast.
That World Series games on TV start at 5 PM, not 8 fucking PM in the middle of an East Coast night. An East Coast night from which I usually excuse myself around 9 PM, so I can drag my writerly ass out of bed before sunrise the next day, and clear-headedly… after a ceramic bucket of coffee… write.
And that did not happen today.
Well, the ceramic bucket of coffee happened, but not before sunrise. And now, here I sit in my big comfy writer’s chair, writing in the afternoon, when I should be having lunch and watching reruns of Supernatural on TNT. All because my love of baseball is getting in the way of my love of doing old people stuff, like waking up before the birds, or watching the sun rise through the red leaves of the Japanese Maple in the front yard. Or doing things the way writers who are old, do things on the West Coast, like watching pretty much the last good surviving memory from your childhood… baseball… take you away from what’s good in the life you’re living now.
And yes, I know there’s a thing called a DVR. And yes, you know that it’s not the same thing as anything happening live on TV, and that spoilers are real, and in just a couple more days the World Series will be over, and I can go back to my old guy life, where the sidewalks roll up at 9 PM, and coffee tastes better before sunrise. And where words flow better from fingers, through keyboards, before day turns back into night on the East Coast.
And while I’ve got you here, tell me, is there a good memory from your childhood, a good thing that still exists, that you would, even temporarily, let invade the good in your life, here and now?
I really want to know.
But in the meantime 9 PM, and all those rolled-up sidewalks, are calling.
See you tomorrow.
William S. Friday 
Nope. Not a one.
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I don’t know but that I feel confused. I would love to let a good memory from my childhood invade my adulthood, even the good of my adulthood. For example, I have two kids. The July of 2021, my oldest kid was 2.5 and my youngest was 6 months, and my husband and I took them to London to stay a few days in the vacant property belonging to my late grandmother. I have such good memories of that house. It’s a 3-storey haunted Victorian terraced house on a quiet street in South London. All my memories of that house were lively, hopeful, happy, dreamy.. childhood perfection really. I wanted to show my kids all the old hidey holes, maybe make them feel the magic I used to feel being there… But the house was empty. Full of old ghosts. Literally. Footsteps in the night and whatnot. But also figuratively. Dying laughter always three steps up the steep staircase. Childhood memories just behind a door, but when you open it cold bareness glares back at you. Sleeping in the big double bed I sometimes used to share with my warm, kind, lovely grandmother… cold. Just cold and empty now. Is that what you mean? Does adulthood ruin precious childhood memories? Does it taint them? Paint them ugly colours?
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Sports will do that! As a hockey fan, I’ll stay up until 4am and squeak a couple of hours of “sleep” .
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Exactly! And come spring, if the Kings go deep in the playoffs, sleep will not be an option 😵
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Nothin came to mind but the ice cream festival in elementary school, but I guess that was really about visiting with my grandparents who are now both passed away. So-probably not. The truth is that my childhood experiences weren’t too compelling.
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My folks grew up through the Great Depression too. What a time that must have been.
I remember on a hot summer night (we had a two story house, no air conditioning, southeast Michigan) we’d take our sleeping bags downstairs and sleep on the living room floor with our front door open to let in a breeze. Just the screen door would be locked. That would never in a million years happen today.
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Trail riding on horseback is my best and most favorite childhood memory. I was stronger then. I was able to ride into my early 20s. I’m not strong enough anymore physically. But if there was a way to trail ride safely now, I would let that interrupt absolutely any comfort level or routine in my life. And that’s really big because I am horribly entrenched in my routine!
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The first three things that popped into my head: playing hopscotch, painting plastic bird replicas, and dancing with my best friend to music by the Supremes. Someday maybe I’ll try and figure out what it was about those things that I remember so fondly. All three are physical, and I was doing them with other kids. Maybe that’s it. Maybe that’s what I want/need more of in my old person’s life right now.
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