So here goes nothing....I'd like to talk about some late night action and how the evolution of "Late Night" has changed throughout my life.When I was in elementary, I can remember pushing the limits of the space time continuum by turning on the lights outside our garage and playing some best of 7 series on the court with the ever lucky Jed Geer and Shawn(nana) Lee. Those games probably would have kept the neighbors up all night if we hadn't lived next to the Royal Manor old people's home, with the ball bouncing on the concrete and us reacting like idiots to every made and missed shot, errant pass, and rolled ankles on the kamikaze cliff where the pavement met the grass. We played thousands of games of pickup hoops late into the night and then would get up and start it all over again. Oh to be a kid again!
As I got into hike school those late nights of basketball turned into many hours of sitting in the kitchen with my mom talking. As you can probably decipher, I was a pretty big party animal in high school with my late night menu consisting of alfredo noodles, butter, and parmesan cheese, a beverage of WCP (or as normal people call it: Wild Cherry Pepsi), and some good talks with my mama talking about everything and anything, although hoops or drama productions dominated the conversation. Honestly, that was the highlight of my late nights in high school; I know what you're thinking, "wow, just like Dazed and Confused and Project X". But really, I wouldn't change it for anything.
As we're going along chronologically, as a history teacher would, the next step would be college. Let's just say there were a couple more late nights in collage, yes collage (a blurry mashup of pictures) than there were in high school but a couple stand out more than others. First were my years at the University of Northland State College University or as some call it, TRFU. How many all nighters could one person pull in a calendar year, you ask? I reply with "how many times could Curt Christianson be cloaked while playing James Bond multiplayer Protect the VIP?" Yes, our late nights were often filled with a Football Frenzy order from Dominos and all night PS2 action at the Campus Courts. There may have been other nights with other things involved, too, but we'll leave that for another blog....
Moving on up to the next prestigious university, MSUM was the next stop on the life train. Meeting up with old cohorts like Dusty Neibauer and Kyle Simonson, newish/oldish friends in Ryan and Jason Brumwell, and a completely new random stranger that became a good friend because of basketball in Dan "the Stallion" Nyberg. We spent quite a few days together playing basketball at Nemzek but I doubt we ever played harder than when getting after a rousing late night game of "31". I can hardly hear the phrases "near....far", "10 (but in the voice)", and "A-Bomb, Bi@*&#$" without breaking into the hysterical laughter you only achieve at 3 am. Throw in a bakers dozen of garlic cheese bread that Slingshot delivered from Pizza Patrol and I'd say that's a pretty great late night!
Being old enough to frequent the bars meant that we could, of course, also hit the karaoke scene. I don't know what's better, our version of Total Eclipse of the Heart or the ladies that take it so serious they get mad at us when we would upstage them (in our own mind, but you must remember, it was pretty late at night)! I could probably go on and on about all the late nights we all spent together but some things are better left unsaid and just remembered, or should I say kind of remembered!
After college I assumed my late nights would pretty much be behind me and for the most part they were, until this past December when Bree and I were blessed with the biggest life changer, our son Tate. I've never done any drugs but I can only assume that those first two weeks after bringing Tate home is what it's like to be on black tar heroin. Those late nights are a blur, with a lot of screaming, crying, sucking on bottles, and peeing in the bed and if you then put that with all the stuff Tate was doing it was a chaotic time! Seriously, though, I literally had no clue what I was doing and the one person who could tell that the most was Tate. Think about his strange journey that led him to my arms and then he was thinking, "I got stuck with this clown, can someone please just feed me my food and rock me with a little rhythm?" I remember one of the first late nights when Bree's mom was at our house and I couldn't rock Tate to sleep and I finally handed him off to Bobbi with an exasperated, "he's so fussy right now". As soon as he nuzzled into her arms he was sound asleep and I zombied off to bed with the thought that all those late nights in my life before this never prepared me for this.
In fact, nothing could prepare me for being a father, but as I rocked Tate to sleep one night (yeah, I figured out how to do it eventually) I thought back to all the late nights I had and thought about a quote I had just recently heard that fit the situation perfectly. Too bad for me I hadn't slept for 34 straight hours and have since forgot that great quote and damn near everything about that night! Whatever. All I can say is that of all the great late nights I've had, with all my awesome friends, nothing compares to a late night of holding Tate in my arms. I can't wait until we can turn on the lights outside the garage, play hoops into the wee hours of the night, and start the whole cycle of late nights all over again.
No comments:
Post a Comment