It's 5 O'Clock Some Where

I am currently visiting my parents in Florida.  I am the middle child, but I am the only child left. My parents had three children.  I had a brother who was four years older and a sister that was two years younger.  She was born with Downs Syndrome and a defective heart.  She passed on two months after birth.

On the outside, I resemble my Mother, but I am my father on the inside.  My brother, well, I am not sure who he looked like, but he was my Mother to a tee.  As I aged, I used to tell my Mother that I thought he was the Milk Man’s son.  I know he was a product of them, he had my Dad’s nose and he had really curly hair, but it was red.

He was the “perfect” child in my Mother’s eyes.  But, my Mother was blind when it came to her son. He was a home body as a child and from what I have heard, this continued as an adult. He loved to watch TV, read comic books, play board games and pester the crap out of me.

I was the child that was always on the go. When I was in grade school the minute I got home I would change my clothes, jump on my bike and be gone to play with my girlfriends.  There were three of us and we were inseparable. Our fourth grade teacher had taught us to play the ukulele and then the guitar. So we would get together and “hum and strum” after school. 

We did other things that little girls do, but we were just inseparable. I lived six blocks from Kris and Linda and they lived three houses apart from one another. There houses were right across the street from our school. So they could start playing together sooner.  I had to walk home and change in to my play clothes before I could ride my bike back to join them and I was always anxious to get back there to play.

My rebellion as a child started at a very young age. My Mother insisted I have a curfew.  She demanded I be home by 5 o’clock in the afternoon for dinner.  What five-year old to nine-year old has a curfew? I on the other hand always pushed the envelope and would go home on my time. I would wait until my Mother called and asked Linda’s mother if I was there.  Linda’s mom would come outside and tell me I needed to go home. I knew what awaited me when I rode my Schwinn down the driveway, but I didn’t care. What was she going to do, kill me? I’m sure there were days that she felt like she could, but I am still breathing.

No, she would yell until she was blue in the face, ground me or her favorite form of punishment, beat me.  Yes, back in the 60’s parents beat you and didn’t think twice about it. It didn’t matter what she did, the first day I was off punishment, she’d have to call and tell me to come home again.  And the cycle started all over again.

One would think you would learn.  I had a watch. I knew how to tell time. I even knew when the little hand was teetering between the four and five, the big hand, ticking toward twelve, striking the top of the hour…its five o’clock somewhere!

This didn’t improve as I aged.  By the time I reached my teenage years, the curfew was altered.  The punishment was not.  I was sixteen years old, had a car and worked part time after school in East Lansing.  I had to be home at midnight. Now this was a vast improvement over the days of five o’clock, but for some reason I could not adhere to this simple requirement set forth by my Mother.

After school, I came home to change to my uniform and headed to my job. Afterwards, I would change at work and head to the skating rink where I would hang with my friends until the rink closed at 11:30.  For those of you not familiar with the logistics of the Lansing, Michigan area, it was a minimum of 30 minutes to drive from East Lansing to DeWitt where I lived.  If I had been smart, I would have left early, even just ten minutes to insure I was home in a timely manner, but again, what was she going to do, kill me? I weighed this in my head time and time again as I watched the clock tick away. The worse she could do is beat me and every time I chose the beating over granting my Mother this one simple wish, be home on time. Why?

Why did I have to be home at midnight?  I wasn’t misbehaving.  I didn’t drink.  I didn’t smoke. I didn’t do drugs. Why did I have to be home at midnight? What was so magical about this bewitching hour that my Mother insisted I be home?

I had survived the dinner curfew.  Nothing happened to me except the beat down if I came home after 5 o’clock.  Then the curfew was to come in when the street lights came on.  I couldn’t even manage to adhere to that simple command and now it was midnight. If I survived all of these other curfews, what was out there that my Mother feared and tried to protect me from?

My last beating took place when I was seventeen years old.  It took my Mother over twelve years to learn that beating me or grounding me was NOT working. She didn’t remove the curfew, she didn’t stop worrying, she, just quit the spankings.

At eighteen, I was legally an adult.  When I turned eighteen, you were considered to be of legal drinking age.  This lasted for eight months and then the law changed the legal drinking age to twenty one.  I never experimented with alcohol like teenagers do.  To this day I have never been drunk or have I experienced a hangover.  But Mother still insisted on this curfew. If she wanted me home at midnight, I stretched my arrival time to one o’clock in the morning.

I questioned her often, why? Her response was always the same, “Because that was what my father made my curfew.”  Now that was logical! Really, you’ve set this magically time for me to come home because that is what your curfew was? She finally threw her hands into the air and told me to be home by one o’clock in the morning.  You guessed it, I came in at two.

We had this disagreement for years.  I was a young adult.  I didn’t like authority.  To this day I question authority.  As she lay in wait for me one of those evening as I tiptoed in the house, the truth spilled out, “Nothing good happens after midnight! That is why I want you home!”

The moment of truth had been spoken.  It was time for me to teach my mother a lesson. “Mother, just so you know, whatever you think happens after midnight, can happen before midnight.” Curfews were now a thing of the past.  I was free to roam.  There were no more struggles over the clock. My Mother, I am sure continued to worry as mothers do, but from that moment of truth, I made it home every night, no later than one.