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When I rose with the roosters (even though they returned to bed)

By Ed Goldman

In popular myth, probably based on reality, public executions often occur at dawn. For a night owl like me, this is disquieting: I mean, even in my beloved western movies, the sheriff warns the bad guy, “Get out of Dodge by noon.”

This seems sensible and equitable, first because checkout time at most hotels is 11 a.m. or later. If the bad guy’s a night owl, getting out of town by, say, 6:45 a.m., would seem to impose an unnecessary hardship. To wit: “Shall I breakfast first? I’m just no good without coffee and at least half a McMuffin first thing.” But with a noon deadline, our bad guy has enough time to arise at a rational hour, say 9 a.m., enjoy a leisurely shower and full pre-travel breakfast, pack responsibly (rather than just ball up his all-black shirt, pants and coat) and still manage to mosey by 11:45, max. 

As a night owl, my dilemma is I love to be up early but I despise getting up early. This antipathy toward roosters and alarm clocks probably started in infancy (when I did, too) since almost everything that annoys us later in life had its roots early on, possibly in utero.

You think I’m kidding about that? My mom liked to lie that I was born at 6 p.m. so I’d be just in time to watch the daily Popeye cartoons that ran on New York City’s Channel 11. She told me this when I was about three years old and had already become a rabid fan of the squinting sailor—so much so that it was the first thing I tried to draw when I was four years old—unfortunately, on the wall of my bedroom. (Even worse, I still draw him exactly the same as I did all those decades ago.)

So I was preconditioned to believe from a very young age that the really cool things that happen in your life don’t begin until later in the day. 

For example, at around 5 p.m., our apartment would begin to smell like dinner. (My mom’s food never tasted very good but it always smelled terrific. I felt the same way about coffee until I developed a taste for it in high school.) Around 5:30, my pop came home from the firehouse, on the days he worked a normal shift. I can still remember running into his open-armed embrace and kissing his cheek, which would be as cold or as humid as the day he’d just left behind, and had the combined scents of the 40 cigarettes, packs of Juicy Fruit gum and gallons of coffee he’d been drinking all day. Then, as hungry and tired as her husband might have been, my mom would hold dinner until 6:30 so I could plant myself on the living-room rug and catch Popeye on our giant-console/tiny-screen black-and-white Philco set. Why would I ever think that rising early could top this bliss?

When I was 20 and beginning my second year as a newspaper reporter, I was reassigned from a most agreeable 2-11 p.m. shift to one that ran from 6 a.m.-3 p.m. I was grousing about it one evening when I went to have dinner with my folks and my mom chirpily said, “Well, it ought to be great. Six a.m. is when you were born.” 

When one of my eyebrows reached high enough to brush against my frontal lobe, she left the table and returned with my birth certificate, verifying the assertion. I was thunderstruck, gob-smacked and today would seek out therapy from the revelation. I reacted the way some people might if they found out the people they thought were their mom and dad were actually their aunt and uncle, foster parents or long-term contract players from Central Casting.

“Why’d you tell me I was born at 6 p.m. in time to watch ‘Popeye?'” I asked, trying not to sound whiny in front of my dad, whose work, life and basso profundo voice had left him remarkably intolerant of a son squeaking like a wounded coloratura. In fact, I might even have affected a wry tone, as if to say, “I realize this is hardly worth asking about, ha-ha-ha, but if I just happen to burst into tears, fall to the floor and bang my fists on the Congoleum tiles, ha-ha-ha, will you tell me why’d you @#$^!*ing  lied to me?!”

She laughed and said, “Oh, you loved ‘Popeye’ so much I just thought that you’d enjoy thinking that,” she said. She looked at my dad, who had the ability to completely divorce himself from inane conversations but could still manage to read his wife’s mood and nod amiably, which he now did.