Bedtime
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I have to say, it was remarkable fun to began an entry without the LS designation that I used for tour-related blog entries. That said, a few additions to the tour:
April 27: Barnes and Noble, Upstairs at the Square, 33 East 17th Street, New York, NY, 7 p.m. I will be appearing with John Wesley Harding, a terrific singer-songwriter who's also a novelist. (Unfair, isn't it, to do both so well?)
April 29: Edgar Symposium, 2 p.m. (This is a ticketed event, sponsored by the Mystery Writers of America as part of Edgar Week.)
May 14: The Mystery Bookstore, Los Angeles, CA, 7 p.m.
May 16: M is for Mystery, San Mateo CA, 2 p.m.
(These additions to the schedule were made possible by another LA gig that I'm reluctant to write about yet, because it's pretty cool and I am very superstitious. Okay, but what the heck: I am scheduled to appear on The Late, Late Show with Craig Ferguson on May 14. But bear in mind, these things can always change.)
But what I'm really here to talk about is bedtime. Just yesterday, I had a fascinating conversation with the SO and his mother. He remembered how much he hated bedtime, how often he was caught with a flashlight or contraband transistor radio, how he would sneak out to the listen to the adult conversations. The youngest child by quite a bit, he always worried he was missing something.
Whereas: I loved bedtime. At least, that's how I remember it. And when I tried to think why this was so, I remembered a day when I was no more than six years old. I awakened from a dream, a magnificent dream in which I had been a Supergirl-like creature, capable of flying. (I also resembled Johnny Quest's sister -- blonde, animated, two-dimensional.) I wanted so badly to recapture that dream. And then I realized -- I could simply tell myself stories like the dream. For the rest of my childhood, I was happy to go to bed when I was still alert enough to spin stories about adventurous girls with amazing powers. I was not unlike the two sisters in All-of-a-Kind Family, Charlotte and Gertie, who made a game out of eating treats in bed, or the older ones, Ella and Sarah, who decorated an imaginary dream house, IIRC.
It seems duh obvious that such a child would grow up to write stories for a living, but I honestly never put this together until yesterday, sharing stories in the kitchen of my SO's mother.
So what do you remember about bedtime? Love it, hate it? Did you have rituals? Or rules you flouted?
April 27: Barnes and Noble, Upstairs at the Square, 33 East 17th Street, New York, NY, 7 p.m. I will be appearing with John Wesley Harding, a terrific singer-songwriter who's also a novelist. (Unfair, isn't it, to do both so well?)
April 29: Edgar Symposium, 2 p.m. (This is a ticketed event, sponsored by the Mystery Writers of America as part of Edgar Week.)
May 14: The Mystery Bookstore, Los Angeles, CA, 7 p.m.
May 16: M is for Mystery, San Mateo CA, 2 p.m.
(These additions to the schedule were made possible by another LA gig that I'm reluctant to write about yet, because it's pretty cool and I am very superstitious. Okay, but what the heck: I am scheduled to appear on The Late, Late Show with Craig Ferguson on May 14. But bear in mind, these things can always change.)
But what I'm really here to talk about is bedtime. Just yesterday, I had a fascinating conversation with the SO and his mother. He remembered how much he hated bedtime, how often he was caught with a flashlight or contraband transistor radio, how he would sneak out to the listen to the adult conversations. The youngest child by quite a bit, he always worried he was missing something.
Whereas: I loved bedtime. At least, that's how I remember it. And when I tried to think why this was so, I remembered a day when I was no more than six years old. I awakened from a dream, a magnificent dream in which I had been a Supergirl-like creature, capable of flying. (I also resembled Johnny Quest's sister -- blonde, animated, two-dimensional.) I wanted so badly to recapture that dream. And then I realized -- I could simply tell myself stories like the dream. For the rest of my childhood, I was happy to go to bed when I was still alert enough to spin stories about adventurous girls with amazing powers. I was not unlike the two sisters in All-of-a-Kind Family, Charlotte and Gertie, who made a game out of eating treats in bed, or the older ones, Ella and Sarah, who decorated an imaginary dream house, IIRC.
It seems duh obvious that such a child would grow up to write stories for a living, but I honestly never put this together until yesterday, sharing stories in the kitchen of my SO's mother.
So what do you remember about bedtime? Love it, hate it? Did you have rituals? Or rules you flouted?
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