The other day, while scrolling through Facebook, I noticed what seemed to me to be a particularly odd post: “My family sucks: nobody woke me up for dinner.” My first thought upon reading this was, of course, “Ha ha. What a loser.” But then, a few lines later I saw the same post from a different person, and then, a few days later, I saw it yet again from a third person. These people didn’t know each other, and in fact, their posts weren’t all exactly the same: even though they all could most definitely be classified as “complaining,” some were whining, whereas others were just plain angry (“FML” as opposed to “thanks for nothing, Mom”).
In fact, the only thing these three people had in common was that they were all posting at about the the same time of day—or rather, night. They were all posting at about one o’clock in the morning. Also, none of the posts complained about not being called for dinner. As in “You can call me anything, but don’t call me late for dinner.” No, all of these posts specifically said wake.
That seemed rather odd to me: I don’t know about you, but personally I would be pissed off if somebody woke me up for dinner. “What the hell are you doing?” I would say. “I’m sleeping.” (In fact, I used to say that very thing when my son Clyde was a toddler and would come into my room at night carrying some cold, wet tidbit from his own dinner for me to “finish.” There’s nothing like being woken by the pickle from a hamburger (you hope) being pushed between your lips. It’s like… yeah, no, actually it’s not like anything at all. Some experiences are completely singular, and that is one of them.)
These people, though, seemed to feel differently. They were all positively put out that no one had bothered to wake them for dinner. Who knows? Maybe it was a medical issue. Did they, perhaps, all suffer from the same glandular problem? Or maybe it was something more basic than that: some babies, I have heard, sleep so soundly, and so much, that the only way their parents can get them to eat enough is to wake them up every four hours to eat. (Yeah, I didn’t have one of those babies, either). Maybe these people were just the older version of those babies, and their poor caregivers, exhausted after years of round the clock feeding, fell asleep and missed the one am feeding. How sad, to think that for the rest of their lives someone will have to wake them up to remember to eat. How will they ever live a normal life? (I can see it now: someone sprinting from the banquet hall in a panic: “Oh no! We forgot to wake Julie for her wedding dinner!”)
Or maybe it’s not a medical issue at all. Maybe they are trying to bulk up for some movie they’re about to star in, and need to be woken every few hours to chug down some raw eggs and a protein shake. But then again, how realistic is that? After all, how many people ever get to play Batman? (Insert Michael Keaton joke here.)
The only other possible explanation is that they somehow think that the rest of the world should change to suit their strange, nocturnal lifestyle, with breakfast served at the crack of noon, lunch in time for the five o’clock news, and dinner at midnight—after, of course, they are finished having their eleven o’clock siesta.
But that would be so… selfish. So self-centered. So teenager. Wait a minute: now that I think about it, that was the one other thing they all had in common.
Oh. Never mind, then: case closed.