I knew a man who got up at 3:00 AM every morning. He made himself breakfast and coffee, and he
read the paper after it arrived. He used
to say that he felt sorry for people who didn’t get up in time to enjoy the
morning. He liked the quiet and the
sunrise, and he enjoyed the cool air in the summer. He has long since passed away now, but I was
always fascinated by his ability to get so much enjoyment from the morning.
I used to work with a woman who told me that there were
two kinds of people in the world: larks and owls. Larks are up with the sun. They chirp and swoop through the air in
celebration of the day. Owls open their
eyes at sunset. They blink, stretch, and
scratch their wings with their claws.
Maybe they fully wake up, and maybe they go back to sleep until
dark. They are intellectual, filling the
night air with the question, “Who?” They
are content with their way of life, but they don’t quite fit in with the
regular work day. They seem to kind of
scare people.
I am an owl. I
love sleeping late in the morning. I
find the sunset to be just as beautiful as the dawn. I like to read or watch TV until I get
sleepy, which is usually around 2:00 AM.
I was about 12 or 13 years old when they came out with
transistor radios. My mom gave me one
for Christmas that was about the size of one of today’s small, digital
cameras. I used to hide under the covers
and listen to popular music on station KIMN in Denver until I went to sleep. Consequently, the batteries didn’t last
long. So, I would turn my clock radio
way down low and listen to it. Sometimes
Mom would hear it and yell, “Turn that off and go to sleep!” Other times I would wake up with it still
playing and realize that I overslept because I went to sleep before setting the
alarm.
The work-a-day world is made for larks. “Be at your desk and working by 8:00
AM.” There is a lot of discrimination
against owls. Our bosses chew is out for
not getting to work until 8:15 AM. They
get irritated when we can’t get our act together until after 10 o’clock. We have trouble with medical appointments
because, “The only opening we have is at 8:30.
If you want an afternoon appointment, you will have to wait three
weeks.” The auto mechanic tells us that,
“We can get your car done tomorrow if you get here at 7:30. The schools teach our children that, “The
early bird gets the worm.” Researchers
tell our employers that people are the most productive before 11:00 AM. Not me!
I am the most productive after I am fully awake, which is usually around
two in the afternoon.
Things get a little better after you retire. The fish bite almost as well between 7 to
10:00 PM as they do before 7:00 AM. The
hunting is good in the early evening, too.
You still get the same grief, however, trying to make appointments and
run errands in the afternoon. Most
churches schedule Sunday services early so that the men won’t stay home and
watch football. The neighbors think you
are lazy because you are not out mowing the lawn at eight o’clock on Saturday
morning. (Good grief, Charlie Brown!)
I defiantly remain an owl. I spent 50 years punching somebody else’s
clock. Now, I unashamedly follow the
beat of a different drum. If I watch TV
until 2:00 AM and sleep in until ten, then that is my own business. Fortunately, my wife is a bird of the same
feather. So, let’s hear it for the owls.
“When I was a boy
the Dead Sea was only sick.”
George Burns
