Len Robbins

At 3:30 p.m., I yawned.

I must be tired, I thought to myself. I’ll make sure to get to bed early tonight.

That’s the plan – every day at 3:30 p.m.

For me, “getting to bed early” means prior to 11 p.m. And it rarely happens. Here’s why:

TV.

To the regular reader of this column (yes, you), you must think I watch television 24/7. I don’t – know what 24/7 means. But I think it means “a lot” from how they say it on TV all the time.

For some reason, possibly jaundice, I can’t seem to go to sleep if I find something interesting on TV, or not interesting, or if the TV is on, or has the possibility of being on.

Let me give you a recent example. The other night, my family and I watched a movie until 9:30 p.m. They then went to bed. I turned to the channel guide to see what else was on, with the plan being that I would watch something for 30 minutes, then go to bed at the decent hour of 10 p.m.

But the movie “Risky Business” was playing on AMC. And I haven’t seen it in about nine months. Perhaps Joel cracks the glass egg over Guido the Killer Pimp’s head in the AMC version of the movie, I thought. (Spoiler alert: He doesn’t).

So I stayed up two extra hours watching a movie I’ve already seen 15 times.

Then I watched two episodes of “Simon & Simon,” and found myself going to bed at 1:30 a.m.

Did I really need to watch “Risky Business” again? Yes. I rather enjoyed it. Did I really need to watch two episodes of “Simon & Simon”? No. One would have sufficed. Or none.

Fear.

I’m not scared of the dark, or the bogeyman, or sleep, or of zombies. I’m fearful something interesting will happen after I go to sleep.

I share this fear with both of my sons, apparently. And most 2-year-old boys.

There’s a great Richard Pryor routine where he claims his father had an 11 p.m. curfew when he was a teen. He would go out and ask the other teens what they were doing. “Waiting on 11:30,” they replied, adding, profanely, that things really were going to start happening at 11:30.

I don’t know what exciting “things” I’m expecting to happen after I go to bed. I’m 50-plus years old and live in Homerville, Georgia. Maybe I’m fearful I’ll miss out on a riveting Nick Saban/Deion Sanders commercial or an ambulance will drive by my house.

Hunger.

I find it impossible to watch “Dazed and Confused” for the 22nd time without a snack to wash it down. And I find it difficult to go to sleep on a full, or empty, stomach. My kitchen is all too agreeable to find such snacks at 10:45 p.m. – usually snacks that belong to another person.

“Who opened my bag of Doritos and ate half the bag?” my youngest son inquired at breakfast as he was preparing for school.

“I don’t know,” I responded, discreetly nodding toward the dog.

“What’s that orange salty stuff around your lips?” he asked.

“Toothpaste?” I sheepishly answered.

Procrastination.

I simply prefer to put off unpleasant or difficult things. Sometimes, I’ve found that if you put off things for long enough, they go away on their own, like a stray dog or relative that you refuse to feed.

So far, this theory hasn’t worked with the need for sleep, or writing a weekly column. But I’m no quitter. I’ll keep not trying.

© Len Robbins 2022