The Night Shift

Why is it that in most houses I know, while the men are snoring, the women are up, pulling a night shift?  Long after our paying jobs are done, we stay up readying our charges for the next day.  Laundry, picking up, prepping food, lunches, writing notes, organizing back packs, running the dishwasher:  my mother did it and probably her mother before. 

I'll admit there's something vaguely comforting in being the only one up.  In the quiet, I can get so much more done.  I am able to resist the urge to yell at my 10 year old, once again, for leaving his dirty clothes in the middle of the floor.  Instead, I get to be reflective.  Late at night, when they are sleeping, it's easy to hearken back to when they were babies.  When I was pregnant, a wise woman told me that I'd miss those late nights, rocking in the rocker, with a downy-haired baby snuggled into my neck.  Late at night, I am transported back there.  And somehow, picking up pairs of their dirty boxers is not all that bad.

The dark solitude takes me back to my own childhood.  Clearly,  I can remember going up to bed, and still hearing the television downstairs.  In my earliest memories, I recall the theme music from "Alfred Hitchcock Presents," or "The Saint."  That music always unnerved me.  It meant that it was way too late for me to be up, or even my mother (or so I thought).  Now that I have a family of my own, I too relish staying up to watch my shows while I tend to those leftover chores.  It is as if I have officially earned passage into that club.

My aunt was the queen of the nightworkers.  She would stay up long past midnight, sewing, ironing, sweeping and generally obsessing over her home.  (As I grew up, I realized she had a serious case of OCD.)  The result was a haggard appearance, with large, dark circles around her eyes.  I have vowed to never take the night shift to such extremes.  Call it vanity, but I'd much rather sacrifice the Good Housekeeping award over my looks. 

Many of my friends commiserate.  When they hear I or another compatriot was up late, they'll say, "You should have messaged me. I was up, too."  Chalk up that convenience to the abundance of technology:  phones and social media make it easy to intrude into that late night club without waking family members.  But wouldn't that defeat the purpose of the night shift?  Laboring in solitude is exactly the point.

Hiding Faces Behind Facebook and Other Cowardly Behavior

When we were growing up, there was a term:  "beer muscles."  Have a few brews, and get liquid courage.  Then you could act like a complete jackass.  Today, the muscles are pumped behind the computer screen.  Under the guise of anonymity, people (particularly teens) get juiced and reckless.  They think they can say anything, about anyone, without repercussion.  Can you think of a more cowardly behavior?

Every day we hear more and more warnings about the treachery of bullying.  Yet, kids think it is perfectly acceptable to slander teachers and coaches in public forums online.  The latest spineless example is a Twitter page entitled, "Kingston Coaches."  I invite you all to log on and read the posts, as they are public.  Just one glance will assure you that our hard earned tax dollars are not paying off well for the barely literate author/creator. 

Not only are the comments incoherent and ungrammatical, but they border on racist rants.  I would challenge any reader to reverse the racial profile.  Where he (she?) insinuates that a coach is incompetent because he or she is white, would it not be racist to say a black coach is incompetent?  I shutter to even think what the reaction would be.  But on here, people accept it and laugh.  Are we not going backward?

And the disgustingly blatant sexist riffs surely should dissuade any young woman from reading on, yet there are a good number of female followers of the page.  As a woman, I think this is what disappoints me most.  Any opportunity to resort to body parts and sex talk he takes.  Women, especially athletes:  do you want to be devalued like that?

This coward bolsters his own non-existent ego by spewing forth hate that others willingly suck up.  OK; I'll give in; it's rampant in today's culture.  But glancing at the names of the followers angers me.  There are a number of intelligent, respectful, hard working athletes following this crap.  It's a damn shame that they feel the need to align themselves with an illiterate libeler. 

Here's my attempt at breaking through the writer's veil of anonymity.  See if you agree:  He or she is a disgruntled, former athlete whose current activities consist of playing videogames in his parents' basement while getting high.  Obviously, his grades were not up to snuff, nor his commitment to hard work.  It's easy to blame everyone else but yourself:  coaches, teachers, parents, people with money, people with jobs, big booties,  the City of Kingston.  The fact that you are not going to the NBA/NFL/MLB squarely rests on your incompetent coach's shoulders.  Because let's face it, so many KHS students have made it in professional sports (cough, cough).  It has nothing to do with the fact that you're posting pictures of your weed and beer pong tables, and throwing your buddy under the bus by sharing snapshots of him with his head in your toilet. 

How many times has this coward relied on a coach for a ride when his parents didn't show?  Or borrowed his phone?  How many meals have coaches bought for him?  How many hours spent away from their own families were invested in his half-baked dreams of playing somewhere beyond Kingston?  Your anger is surely misdirected.  It's too bad that computer screens aren't mirrored.  Then, maybe nameless tweeters could look themselves squarely in the face and clearly see the source of their problems.