I was awakened at around 5 a.m. this morning by my son Jeff, calling to inform me that my grandson Dakota had “broken his jaw”. He needed some pain medicine until the pharmacy opened later in the day. I said, “Sure”.
They came over in my son’s car. Dakota said that he’d fallen. I felt bad for him, gave him some pills, and went back to bed.
I’ve been thinking about my grandson all morning. The lad can’t seem to catch a break…there’s always some disaster that sets him back.
To be really honest, though, most of Dakota’s troubles that he’s experienced in the past ten years have been self-generated. He’s a pretty good kid, but he’s found a way to get arrested for juvenile shit, have car accidents, earn a D.U.I, and lose his driver’s license. And, that’s just the stuff I know about.
He told me just yesterday that he’d finally gotten his license back: he was quite happy. So was I, not only for him, but for us. Dakota is working with our son Jonathan, learning the bookkeeping trade…so that Charlie can really retire.
The fact that Dakota’s latest setback happened in the wee hours reminded me of the old saying, “NOTHING GOOD HAPPENS AFTER MIDNIGHT”.
That seems to be the time when young people like to blow off steam, hang out, or “chill” with friends.
I am reminded of the Eric Clapton song, “After Midnight”.
Included in the song’s lyrics are:
We gonna chugalug and shout
…gonna stimulate some action
…gonna get some satisfaction
…gonna cause talk and suspicion
…gonna give an exhibition
…gonna find out what it’s all about
We gonna let it all hang down
Yep, that sounds about right. Go out, get blitzed, make a fool of yourself, and then see what develops…after midnight.
I’m not an expert on this (although I did work in emergency rooms for a number of years), but it seems to me that an inordinate number of bad things happen in the wee hours. I’m talking about people driving their car off of cliffs or into trees, drunk drivers causing horrible accidents, and rowdiness at bars, among other things.
Booze and fractures seem to go hand in hand. A “boxer’s fracture” is a broken finger that is caused when someone throws a punch without properly making a fist. We used to see a lot of them each New Year’s Eve, for some reason. Also, broken tailbones. This occurs when someone, usually half-ploughed, would have their feet fly out from under them when, in the pitch dark, they stepped onto a slick sidewalk covered with black ice. Another New Year’s Eve Special, particularly on the East Coast.
Broken jaws are rare. It takes some force to break the mandible; just falling down won’t normally do the job, unless it’s out of a multi-story building, and other things would be broken in that event. Walking into a baseball bat would do it. But, most broken jaws that we saw in the E.R. were the result of some guy catching an uppercut during a bar fight.
So, you’ve got your alcohol and darkness as contributors to unfortunate wee hours incidents.
Guys trying to be macho in front of the ladies (and other wanna-be macho guys) have a bad habit of taking guns to nightclubs. It’s almost a weekly occurrence that some professional athlete or entertainer (or their entourage) gets involved in an early a.m. skirmish at a downtown bar, nightclub, or strip joint. Sometimes there’s multiple guns involved, and a bunch of innocent folks, just out having fun, get sprayed with lead.
Then, there’s the really bad stuff that happens after midnight because…there aren’t as many prying eyes around. Let’s face it: working stiffs and their children are in bed because they’ve got to get up early, and old farts like me have been asleep for hours when midnight rolls around.
Criminals prefer to do their thing when there aren’t a lot of witnesses around. At least, the smart ones think that way. The dumb ones don’t care, they’re probably hopped up on something, anyway, and they’re looking to take advantage of other stupid people. A lot of their peers are hanging out after midnight, so there is a good quantity of dumb-on-dumb shit going on like muggings, drug deals, and liquor store robberies.
Stupid juveniles like to prowl the city in the wee hours doing things like breaking into businesses, stealing cars, attempting to hijack ATMs, and robbing people’s homes.
Because seemingly no one is looking, things like joyriding, graffiti tagging, and vandalism of all types are ways for young morons to impress and amuse each other.
Really sick guys prowl the streets after midnight. Charlie and I watch a lot of crime docudramas on TV, and there seems to be no end to the number of murders and rapes that happen to drunk folks coming home from a night out or prostitutes working the dark streets.
Those individuals are easy prey for an experienced pervert or serial killer. Conversely, relatively few serial murder victims are hauled out of their beds by a maniac stranger.
For all of these reasons, I think that it is best for the wife and I to be snugly tucked away in bed in the wee hours, resting up for the next day’s adventures.
It would be very hard, laying supine on our Sleep Number bed, for one of us to fall down or walk into someone’s haymaker.