When There Were REAL Bedtimes

They were just plain mean, my folks. Even though it was the greatest injustice, my parents were adamant about putting their children to bed early. Very early, every night. So early, in fact, that we were usually in bed long before the sun even went down in the summertime. Long, long, long before. Talk about unfair!

But Daddy had a way of enticing us into going along with that program regardless of how woefully inconsiderate it was. His trick? Sheer fun! He played different games with us night after night. He'd get us laughing with corny jokes, and then he'd come up with all kinds of different approaches, whatever goofy idea suited him at the time.

To get us to pick up the living room before bed, sometimes he would commission us into his "army". He would designate us “Sergeants” as we saluted him and he would then give us our orders---like where to put away the folded clothes, or books or toys that were out of place. He'd have us marching along in cadence, all of us on the left or right foot together as we shouted along, and ending up with "sound off, 1-2-3-4, 1-2---3-4!" We little girls thought we were promoted to being grown ups, heroic soldiers at that; practically thought we'd get Presidential Medals of Honor for a job well done. Boy, could we get into it.

Another night he might pretend to be a robber with a gun. And would gruffly tell us what to do so we wouldn't get shot. Again we'd be sent to put away clean towels and whatever we had strewn about. A little scary, a little exciting. He could just as easily choose to be the Sheriff and make us Deputies. Or a Mafia Boss who would assign us "deliveries". Or the scenario could have been Cowboys and Indians, or whatever his imagination lent itself to that particular night. Sometimes he would pretend he had an invisible dog on a leash that would "bark" at us to get our full cooperation. It was always something---something that would make us smile or laugh, and MOVE! Nothing he couldn't get us to do.

When he got us upstairs into our shared dormitory bedroom and into our beds, Daddy would stick around for awhile to play quiet games with us or tell us stories. We learned a lot from playing those games. Games like “States” where he would call out the name of a state and we would have to respond with the name of its capital city. Or we had to somehow identify makes and models of cars; that would always end in hysterical laughter when someone would identify the mystery car they couldn't really pinpoint as “Jalopy”.

Sometimes he would make up far fetched stories or tell us about his childhood when he lived on a farm. He was strange---the only person we had ever heard of who used to ride on a cow. Then there were the nights, not often, when we would coerce him into telling us stories from his life as a soldier in World War II. When he was in training in the Army in North Carolina, bathing in a river, he was paralyzed with fear when an extremely poisonous coral snake slithered up to him. We loved to hear him tell that because of the allure of the element of the danger.

And he lived to tell of it, so we knew there would be a happy ending, after all. He really couldn't be coaxed into telling us about the really dangerous or sad experiences he had during the war in Europe. He would only go as far as how sick he was on the Queen Mary, the ocean liner that took him across the Atlantic. He was so seasick that for Christmas on that boat dinner he had one lime lifesaver.

One puny lime lifesaver? That seemed really strange and quirky. We begged and begged him to tell us stories about the War, but he would just never go there. They probably wouldn't have been very fun to hear or to end up dreaming about. Fathers know best, after all.

Dad had a way of turning everything into fun and games.  A little trick he used even for himself even at work'

Staying up late at night can be pretty cool. Guess we weren't too cool. But I wouldn't trade my early bedtimes from long ago, because I had a Dad with a twinkle in his eye and love in his heart. It doesn't get any better than that. Really.