6:30 in the Morning
The San Francisco 49ers were playing the New York Giants on Monday Night Football. Since my big brother, Wood, and I followed football religiously, the old man would allow us to stay up past our 10:00 bedtime and watch the game with him. We were stoked that he’d gone back on his word and allowed us to stay up till the game was over at midnight. But as the years went by we understood why 10:00 was the curfew; it was often hard to roll out of bed on a Tuesday morning after six hours of sleep.
The game wasn’t the thriller that it was built up to be. The Giants had blown away San Francisco by the start of the 4th quarter. I’d decided to go upstairs, see what Shawn, my younger brother, was up to. He couldn’t have cared less about football, but Mama had won Shawn the right to stay up too. Mama had told the old man that if Shawn wants to stay up past 10:00 and watch cartoons or play with his Lego Blocks, then he should be allowed to. After several weeks of going back and forth on this with the old man, Shawn (who had not grumbled about the privilege that his two brothers had received) was allowed to stay up too. Usually he would just parade around the house in his Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle pajamas.
On this Monday, Shawn was dead asleep once I’d gotten to our room around 11:00. I didn’t want to hit the bed just yet. I felt this obligation to stay up late even if I weren’t watching the game—I wanted to take advantage of the extra allotted awake time. I sat there on my bed and stared at him, but in a daze, wondering what I could do until the clock hit triple zeros on the game downstairs. How this play came to mind I’m not sure. I guess it had something to do with the urgency I felt about fulfilling that last hour with something enjoyable, being that the game hadn’t been. The idea was to change the clock to 6:30, our wakeup time, and play it off—act as if I’d just awakened. Before I knew it, the play was in motion; Wood, whose room pointed directly at our room, was in his room rooting for me but not participating. Although we were teens at this point we were nevertheless still conscious of the belt.
With sleep in his eyes, Shawn got up after the alarm clock beeped. “Man, feels like I just went to sleep a few minutes ago.” Ha! Wood fascinated, watched in his room, and I giggled, astonished that such a goofy gag was fooling him. Shawn didn’t waste any time. He put on his eyeglasses and slippers, made his bed and walked downstairs. I wanted to stop him from walking downstairs. Unlike that football game, I knew this event would be controversial, and for me, potentially painful if he walked downstairs, especially if he turned on the shower. The old man’s law in this house was that his three boys took showers in the morning!
Yet, I could not bring myself to stop Shawn. I had been penalized for laughing. I remember his moves vividly. When he stepped on the fifth stair from the bottom it creaked. Oh my-gosh he was getting close to the end zone where all hell would break loose. Thereafter it was the screeching of the bathroom door. Then followed the inevitable whistle blower, the moment that would cancel it all—the drippy drops from the shower. The old man heard the shower. I could tell, because I heard his footsteps over the shower. His motion wasn’t hurried by the unexpected noise coming from the bathroom. He walked with that consistent, elongated silence between each step that was his trademark—it was that elongated silence between each step that often scared the hell out of us.
Even in the bathroom I could hear his question. It too overshadowed the pouring shower. “Boy, what the hell are you doing?” Innocent to my farce, Shawn said getting ready for school. Before the clock hit zero on the game Wood and I were flagged for being off sides with Shawn. The old man’s Monday Night Fuss was worth that cool memory because the old man had a short memory back then. We watched the Cleveland Browns and Washington play the following Monday.