« Letter to Mike | Main | Well, it's not exactly "Nightline", is it?? »

lizard

past bedtime

by lizard at 01:33 AM on March 06, 2002

i hear the footsteps, louder than the weight borne on the feet would warrant. i hear the rapid breaths as he rips through the rooms, like wired lightning on a sugar rush. occasionally, the chair creaks and the computer peeps the peep of the BSOD, and i raise my sternest voice to say ‘it is past your bedtime, i am not fixing your puter’. it's easier to leave the thing crashed than to risk enticing the four year old net junkie into another round with roly poly ollie and his ilk.

and this being written, he is now in his room, babbling at the bedtime movie, or some toys, or something, anything at all. absent siblings have left him virtually an only child, and he is going to grow up weird like me, able to converse freely and at great length without a human counterpart.

the daddy rumbles through the kitchen to growl about how i ought to be in there settling him down. i think, ‘and you cannot do this because...?’, but say nothing. i also keep typing. things have been brought more into the open between us and he knows more of my feelings, though my intentions are still necessarily unclear.

the mood in the house is tense when i pay attention, which i try not to do too much. it's better to drink the beer and write and write and pretend, for the time being. it's a little late in life to be engaging in this kind of pretense, prolonging the inevitable, but for practical purposes, it's the best i can do.

lulled into a false security by the apparent capitualtion to the bedtime edict, i reboot the computer, and now i hear the chair and the clicking and launching of the games. it's ten-thirty and time to get serious about how late it is.

comments (1)

that sucked .

by nono at August 29, 2005 1:40 AM