Bed in Summer by Robert Louis Stevenson

[conuly]

In winter I get up at night
And dress by yellow candle-light.
In summer, quite the other way,
I have to go to bed by day.

I have to go to bed and see
The birds still hopping on the tree,
Or hear the grown-up people's feet
Still going past me in the street.

And does it not seem hard to you,
When all the sky is clear and blue,
And I should like so much to play,
To have to go to bed by day?

Poem

Today's Calvin and Hobbes

Comments

[acelightning73]

Boys and girls come out to play,
The moon doth shine as bright as day,
Leave your supper and leave your beds,
And you'll all be grounded for the next five years.

[conuly]

Huh. I wonder how people talked about "being grounded" before the invention of air planes - and more precisely, the air force.

[acelightning73]

"YOu're not allowed out of the house until sunrise, you wastrel, you!"

[readerjane]

Yes, it always seemed terribly unjust when my childhood bedtime was 8pm, **and it wasn’t even dark out yet**.

[acelightning73]

When I was a kid, my family wasn't too rigid about clock time. My father worked the night shift at the airplane factory. I resented having to get up and get ready for school - I would be marked late if I didn't enter the building before 8 AM. So I had to get up at six AM in order to get dressed and walk to school in time. When I saw my dad go to work at 4 PM, come home at 11 PM and eat dinner, I wishe they'd do shifts in school - so I could sleep late and be at school by 4 PM. That way I could wake up, get dressed, eat brunch, and finish last night's homework before I had to hand it in. School would end at 7 or 8 Pm and we'd all go home and eat dinner. Alas, it was considered ridiculous to allow children to get enough sleep before the went to school. It was somehow immoral to stay up late or sleep late. You had to be doing something IMPORTANT, something REQUIRED like school or a job, during every moment of daylight. If you were active after dark, you had to be working for the Devil. And if what you were doing wasn't imposed upon you by the world, what you did was unimportant and you should stop wasting your time doing it (like reading, or watching TV, or playing) and get busy WORKING. My natural circadian rhythm is nocturnal. As an adult, I always chose to work the evening or overnight shift when possible.

[readerjane]

I hear you!

I'm not naturally nocturnal, but I do think it's crazy that schoolchildren (especially teenagers) need to start their days so early. Everyone learns better and functions better with enough sleep.

[acelightning73]

There are school districts in various parts of the US where they have re-structured the school day so teenagers aren't walking to school on the roads before the sun comes up. But I don't know any place where a child can go to school on a schedule that suits their metabolism. (I was so happy to have the choice of first, second, or night shift when I grew up and got a job.)

[adafrog]

GOod.

[conuly]

Which, the comic or the poem?

[adafrog]

Yes

[reynardo]

I had a big book of "The Child's Garden of Verse" and that poem was in it. You've taken me back to being about 6 years old.

[conuly]

Planning revenge on your parents like Calvin?

[reynardo]

... No comment.

[ioplokon]

gonna send this to my friend in Alaska

[conuly]

LOL!

[adrian_turtle]

That Stevenson poem has always been one of my favorites. I'd loved it for years before I understood how far north he lived. In a Glasgow winter, it's dark at 3:30 in the afternoon. Here in Boston it's 4:30. Acelightning lived somewhere people thought "if you were active after dark you had to be working for the devil." I've seen the assumption that if you were out after dark you were going to get run over. Or that if you were out after 9, at any time of year, you were up to no good. But nobody ever tried to make me to go bed at nightfall in winter.

[conuly]

You'd never be awake if they did.

[acelightning73]

My family was mostly from the BOston area. So they had inherited puritan moral beliefs. The human body was shameful, and certain parts of it weren't meant to be visible to the public. "If we were meant to prance around naked, we'd be born that way!" And midnight was the witching hour - when demons came out to tempt humans to sin. With my father working nights, I could ask my mom to "let me stay up until daddy comes home". That was okay, and sometimes my dad would read me a story, or sing to me (he had a lovely deep baritone singing voice and and a pleasant speaking voice.) And then staying up to watch the Fourth of July fireworks, or staying up till midnight on New Year's Eve = what a thrill for a little kid!

[dancing_crow]

and then there's this:

Grown-up

Was it for this I uttered prayers,
And sobbed and cursed and kicked the stairs,
That now, domestic as a plate,
I should retire at half-past eight?

Edna St. Vincent Millay (1922)


I just love the phrase "domestic as a plate"