Years ago, my good friend Mary Pratt told me she would ask her father, Walker Percy, why he had to watch the news each morning. He said it was to see who got off the world while they were sleeping.
I love this because there was actually a time when people woke up to face a whole new day. New news, new happenings. This no longer exists because nothing ever gets turned off or shut down any longer. Those of us in my generation knew a time before this- silence - when our world turned off until the news came back with our parents' morning coffee. Younger generations today are never completely unplugged from what is going on in the world beyond them.
Back in the 1900's when MASH came on after the news downstairs, you knew it was time for bed. And that meant going to bed because there was not a television or a telephone in your room. On occasion you could get away with playing your 40 pound stereo very low, but when the needle got to the end of the record you would have to get out of bed and walk to reset the needle or turn it off. Not very relaxing.
And then when the Sony Walkman came out you could actually remain in bed with the cassette tape going in your ears. Of course, you had to hide it beneath the covers turned down low because like going blind from sitting too close to the television, you were going to go deaf with the noise in your ears. And if you happened to fall asleep rather soon and the music popped off the next morning you awoke tangled in cords and your mother convinced you were trying to strangle yourself.
Aside from that, the most trouble a young teenager could get into on a school night after bedtime was following the trials of Nancy Drew and her brave heroics in the light of a bedside lamp that would show beneath your door, sending a parent to tell you: “Lights out!”
We really did unplug from the world until about 4:00 a.m. when the dairy barn would come to life on a distant hill and you rolled over, happily remaining in your warm bed with what nighttime still remained.
I believe a great deal of the trouble young adults get into and the issues we are having with young adults today and their mental health have evolved from never experiencing these moments of being cut off from the chaos of life. The stillness that brings about boredom, which festers up the imagination to fill in the void with the help of a good book.
Nothing is turned off any longer in our world. News, music, movies, social media, internet, texts, and facetimes keep it going unlike back in the day when midnight brought about the National Anthem and then static because even the TV networks went to sleep.
I mean, had we wanted to, we could have gotten into trouble. At one a.m. we could have picked the lock to our parents' bedroom because they could lock their door, but you could not. (Good luck if there was a break-in.) You could have sat on the side of your sleeping parent's bed and picked up the telephone receiver. You only had to dial four numbers back then to get someone, but by the time the third number was dialed heaven forbid it was an 8 or 9. Click-click-click-click-click-click-click-click your father would have been running across the bedroom in his underwear to grab his belt hanging on a nail while your mother in night cream and sponge rollers yelled, "Don't kill her!"
So, I guess we could have gotten into some trouble. But who was there to call? We were all unplugged and asleep.
We need to remember the importance of "Good Night."
