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Some Thoughts on Grass and Bedtimes
When I was in sixth grade, my bedtime was eleven o’ clock. I never really understood my friends’ complaints about being forced to go to bed on time or being yelled at for staying up late, because that was just totally unimaginable to me. I was almost always in bed by eight, voluntarily, and I would just spend two to three hours snuggled in my bed reading or writing or listening to the radio or even just thinking about the world.
However, on the odd night or two when I wanted to stay up late and wander about the house or the yard, my parents never batted an eyelash. The closest thing to yelling I ever heard was the occasional suggestion to put on a jacket because it was chilly outside.
Sometimes I sat on the prickly brown grass of my backyard and stared up at the sky, squinting to find a star or two in the backwash of streetlights from the city. Sometimes I brought a bag of rocks up onto the roof and tried to throw them into trees. Sometimes I just walked in circles around my backyard, looking for treasure in the weary suburban dirt. I don’t know how I entertained myself so well, but I suppose an eleven-year-old is easily pleased.
On one particular night, I decided that I craved the view of a cloudy night sky much more than that of the crumbling stucco ceiling above me, so I wrapped myself in my grandmother’s quilt, hugged my ladybug pillow to my chest, drifted dreamily out to the backyard, and plunked myself down to sleep on the itchy brown grass. Part of me wanted to know what it was like to sleep outdoors, but another part of me just wanted to find out if my parents would ever enforce the eleven-o’-clock rule, because I had never challenged it before.
The ugly ground of my backyard was even more unforgiving as a bed than I had predicted. Blades of grass stood upright like little annoying soldiers and poked me through the thin shield of that pathetic, ratty old patchwork quilt. I could feel rashes forming on the backs of my calves and growing with every second that passed. My hair fanned out across the ground, not at all contained to my tiny pillow, and naturally, all sorts of leaves and plant material and other ground-stuff managed to get tangled in. Mosquitos hummed as close to my ears as they desired and fed on my flesh to their hearts’ content.
Despite all of this, I was honestly completely happy just lying on the ground and looking for stars in the blackish dome above me, listening to the crickets and the occasional frog chirping their little love songs. I drank in the symphony of the night around me and was drunk on it. I was consumed by the beauty of Mother Nature, and her soothing lullabies carried me to sleep.
I woke up in my own bed at six o’ clock the next morning, still wrapped in my grandmother’s quilt, with bits of nature still remaining in the tangles of my hair. I hopped out of bed and went off to brush my teeth, never giving the events of the previous night a second thought until years later.
I now realize that I probably ended up in my own bed by nine or ten that night, if that. My sneaky little plan to test my parents was a total failure.
I wonder if my parents would have enforced the eleven-o’-clock rule, had I ever broken it.
