Midnight Callers

I’m what used to be called a “night owl” because I stay up later than I should at night. I come by it honestly. My mother doesn’t sleep at night either. Maybe it’s genetic. Then again, maybe it’s not, because my father was a morning person. I used to say it’s a miracle I was ever born, but Robert is a morning person so I’ve since figured out how that works, but never mind.

TMI.

This is only sort of about night-owlism and really about the days when phones had cords that attached them to the wall and us to them.

Because of the whole night-owl thing, whenever someone I knew ended up awake in the wee hours -- even if it was someone I didn’t know well or just not well enough for them to call me mid-afternoon, let alone late at night -- I’d get a call.

The drunken ones have their own category. You know what I mean. Like the stuffy conservative guy who after ten years of acquaintanceship suddenly (but unsurprisingly) insisted I refer to him by a female pronoun, or the girl who had tried to seduce my then-boyfriend but was horrified when he hit on her after we broke up and she wanted to complain to me about it. There were many, many others.

In tequila veritas and all that.

Back in ye olden times, I couldn’t wander around and do other stuff while they ranted. The phone was on a cord. Even if it was a (relatively) long cord, I had to sit there or hang up.

Guess what! People who are so drunk that they aren’t in control of what they’re saying will still remember if you hustle them off the phone. I learned that the hard way.

However, sometimes the calls were real. Friends or acquaintances needed to talk and they knew I probably would. Much bonding occurred in those reckless hours when all filters are gone. Yes, even if no one had been drinking anything stronger than Tab™.

Auntie drank a lot of Tab™, but I doubt I’d’ve slept much anyhow.

I’ll let you morning people in on a secret: there’s a kind of magic that happens late at night. Things become more real. Clarity appears when traffic dies down and nobody else is moving around.

You know, like right now.

Don’t be fooled by the time stamp whenever I actually post this. I’m typing to you hours after a sensible person would be tucked away all warm and nighty-night.

Also, I’m doing it as chained to my desk as I used to be to those old rotary-dial phones. Auntie doesn’t use a laptop or a tablet. (Try not to look surprised.) I like my desktop computer with the nice big monitor that I can see without glasses.

In the old days, after the late night confessionals, when I’d run into those people with whom I’d bonded, things would jump one of two ways: the connection would either stick, or it wouldn’t. Sometimes they would regret their midnight vulnerability, or be embarrassed by it.

And that’s why, no matter how much I write with the exhilarating freedom of darkness, I always edit in unforgiving daylight.

Nighty-night now.