Don't Try Staying Awake if You're Old
Or you might spill coffee onto your crotch.
I knew I should’ve put the mug down when my head started bobbing. It was past 11 p.m., and I was finishing a steaming cup of the good stuff, trying to stay awake for the end of the Tennessee football game and UFC fights. But my body refused to cooperate. In a second, my eyes were fully closed, and the coffee spilled waterfall-like onto my crotch.
Jolted awake, I leapt from the couch like a cartoon character. My first thought was to pull off my pants, swallowing my anguished cries so that I wouldn’t wake Haley and the kids. My second was of the woman who sued McDonald’s all those years ago for making coffee so hot that when she spilled it onto her lap she suffered third-degree burns and had to undergo skin grafting. My third was whether I’d just ruined the couch.
In high school and college, my head rarely hit the pillow before 2 or 3 a.m. most Friday and Saturday nights. Either I’d stay up late playing Guitar Hero and writing comedic rap songs with Mickey and Jeremy, fueled by late-night pizza from Joe’s and cases of ice-cold Peach Snapple. Or I’d be at Jan’s house watching films we’d rented at Blockbuster with Alessandro and our church crew, singing karaoke and eating chicken wings. Or with Jahmai parked outside of Stop and Shop, sipping a Dunkin’ Coffee Coolatta, imagining God using us to build his kingdom in foreign lands and debating who was better, Federer or Nadal. The next morning, I’d be up with the sun to catch the first Premier League soccer game of the day at the kitchen table with Nono. I probably averaged no more than 10 hours of sleep a weekend for five years.
That I can no longer hang has been one of the hardest things to accept as a 35-year-old dad of three whose weekends are often indistinguishable from his weekdays. I tell my boss that on Fridays, I clock out of my regular job to clock into my harder job until Monday morning. And whether it’s Saturday or Tuesday, I’m usually up before 6 a.m., like my father and his father before him. In my case, it’s to write and go to the YMCA before work. But I still yearn to make it to Saturday Night Live time (since 12, that has been the marker for whether I’ve crossed the threshold into “staying up late”). Sometimes, miraculously, I make it to the main event of a UFC card at 1 a.m. and am conscious until the post-fight interview. But more often, Haley’s prediction that I’m just going to be asleep within 15 minutes of kissing her goodnight is accurate, and I wake up on the couch with a broken stream and the lights still on.
After getting my coffee-stained pajamas pulled off, I made it to the bathroom and applied a cold, wet towel to my nethers (for some reason, in my mind, this would counteract the burn). I investigated my legs, and the skin was pink but hadn’t bubbled yet. Wrapping the towel around myself like an Amazonian jungle-dweller, I returned to the couch and went through two kitchen towels and a roll of paper towels cleaning up cushions, carpet, and the parts of the floor and wall where the coffee had splattered like blood droplets. Fortunately, as time passed and I made it through the end of the football game and the fights, my distress eased. However, I did Google whether you could suffer internal burns to your groin even if your external parts look fine. And I read through that entire McDonald’s case, which, if you have heard of it, you’ve probably been told was excessive, a miscarriage of justice. But screw McDonald’s. That woman was 79, the coffee was heated to 190 degrees, and corporations suck. Live on, Robin Hood, live on.
From now on, if by some miracle I make it to SNL time alone, I will make sure to keep the coffee mug on the coffee table, where it belongs. Or to drink whiskey instead.
What I’m Reading
I’ve had Jonathan Safran Foer’s Everything is Illuminated on my bedside table for two months. All the critics raved about it, and Foer is quite famous among nerdy literary types, but I couldn’t get past page 50 without wanting to put it down. So, I did. In its place, I picked up One Hundred Years of Solitude, the epic by Gabriel Garcia Marquez that I feel ashamed for not reading until now. I’m more convinced, both as a reader and writer, that what I need to have is fun. My life has enough seriousness in it, and I don’t want to end up more of a depressive moaner than I already have the inclination to be. Good luck following along if you’re a Millennial or below because this one will really test your social-media-warped attention span. (Your effort will be rewarded, I promise.)
What I’m Listening To
As I try to live a more analog life, I’ve been spinning more discs on my record player. But, as discs are expensive, and I’ve got four other mouths to feed, I don’t have as broad a selection as I like (yet). Earlier in the year, my mom sent a care package from Bayonne with several vinyl records I’d been drooling over when I was home last Christmas. In the 1970s and 80s, after moving to the U.S., Nono took the bus into Manhattan to stop by an Argentinian goods store. While there, he’d nab albums from back home, most of them compilations of tango and folklore music that is perfect for making you feel worse when you’re in a wicked nostalgia bender. Yesterday, I spun La Historia de Aldo Monges.
I’ve also been listening to a mix of more acoustic, rootsy records and heavy, melodic stuff. This week's mainstays are Tyler Childers’ Can I Take My Hounds to Heaven? and Delta Sleep’s Spring Island.
What I’m Watching
Besides Tennessee football and World Cup qualifiers (plus Mauricio Pochettino’s debut as the US men’s national team coach, a 2-nil win over Panama), the TV hasn’t been on much at home.
Two Fridays in a row, we did a kid’s movie night, watching the 1977 and 2011 versions of Winnie the Pooh. But we had a family birthday party on Friday, so we postponed this week (she’s not ready for it, but I picked up Brave for $2 at McKay’s for Alba). On Saturday morning, I watched Hot Fuzz, which had me on the floor holding my stomach. I was never one for crass comedies. In my first year as a Jesus follower, I made sure to judge harshly all of my friends who went to see Super Bad and then watched it months later in my dark dorm room alone like a proper sinner. But I’ve been trying to collect witty, clean comedies I can eventually expose the kids to when they think they’re grown-up. The satirical po-po flick doesn’t meet the standard—no boobies, but way too many f-bombs—however, I’ll keep it in the collection alongside Dinner for Schmucks and Nacho Libre.
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