Saturday evening 2200 hours.

I stare at my computer screen wondering what to write.  My brain carries the sound of white noise as I sip the last of my sleepytime tea. I am showered and fresh, pajamas are on, my hair still dripping slightly. My wife comes up the stairs, inquiring about my 40 mile stare.  I state matter of factly; I can’t think of a thing to write. She replies maybe its past your bedtime, why dont you come to bed.

Hmm maybe???

Wait a minute, have I finally reached the age where I must be tucked neatly into bed before midnight? Jeopardy is over and apparently I can’t seem to make it through Wheel of Fortune! Should I bust out the walker and start bitching about the horrible service after 5pm at the local Denny’s! I can hear myself now; Holy crap they never remember my senior discount!! This cant be so! We are talking about me! King of late night! Ruler of the stars! Howler to the moon! God who surveys the breaking morning sun! Why you have no idea the powers I hold in regards to being an all nighter!! I will be damned if you think for one minute I am ready to turn down my hearing aids, lay on the Apsercreme, drop the old chompers in the Poli-dent and call it an evening!

This cat could party till dawn baby! Thats right, start drinking at 5pm and walk into the house as the sun breaks over the Sierra Mountains, take a little nap and hit it hard again! Oh yeah I was that guy! No beer I hadn’t tasted, no place I wouldn’t party, no time I needed to be home! Yep a regular “Frank the Tank”!  When it came to work I wasnt much different.  Fire the truck up at 3am hit the road and arrive home at 9pm. Grab a little grub, hit the hay and do it all over again! That was me, a regular night owl.  Candle burner from both ends! Night-watchman to society! It was awesome! Plenty of time to sleep when you die! Right? RIGHT???

So what the Hell happened? How in the world did I end up sitting here on a Saturday night with tea? Not even a shot of something in the tea! Just tea! In my pj’s, barefoot, wet, and boring.  How sad is that? No really, how much worse could this possibly be? Gosh, now I am kind of feeling sorry for myself.  Where did my wild side go? Where did it disappear too? I mean I can’t even feel it anymore, its like a dull, numb ache inside.

Oh wait; now I remember.

My wild side slowly evaporated after four kids, a mortgage and multiple responsibilities. Helping a few friends say goodbye to their wild side’s ate away at mine for a while. I closed the door on my wild side when I took on the challenge of becoming a firefighter. The last nail in my wild side’s coffin was after my first few years on the job picking up the after math of many other people’s wild side’s gone horrendously wrong.  Yep the all nighter, wild sided “Frank the Tank” Betty was gone for good.  Good riddance!

So here I sit staring at my computer wondering what to write and suddenly it doesn’t seem so bad that I am in my comfy pajamas with the last drop of sleepytime tea hovering over the bottom of my mug. My family is asleep, quiet has fallen over our house and I am the last one up.

Oh yeah I still got it!