Drummond At Night

I found out at an early age that sleep and I didn't really get along very well. I would sometimes lay in bed trying to go to sleep only to have invading thoughts like schoolwork, baseball, girls, or Ozzy lyrics. Sometimes I would get up and watch TV, but there usually wasn't too many interesting things to watch. In Drummond, we didn't have cable so we got NBC, CBS, ABC, PBS and a couple of UHF stations. So one option was TV, another was listening to music. This was often counterproductive since I loved music so much. I would just listen and listen and listen until the sun came up. Strike that for trying to sleep. One thing that I found that worked very well in calling the sandman was walking. The first couple of times I ventured outside after everyone had gone to bed, I was nervous. I would quickly walk around two blocks and come straight back home, come inside, lock the door and peek out the window to see if anyone was coming to tell mom and dad that they saw me galavanting around town. That never happened, so I got braver. Late at night  I would walk down to the park which was about three blocks for me, hang out on one of the swings for a few minutes and start to head back. The second time I walked to the park, I hung out like usual and started heading back home. A panic attack hit me! Oh crap! What if mom or dad wakes up, turns off the living room lamp and locks the door while I'm out here. I'll have to sleep outside all night! I made it home and no one had locked the door, but I knew I couldn't risk that in the future. All the outings from then on were documented with a note taped to the inside of the front door. "I couldn't sleep so I went for a walk. Please do not turn off the light or lock the door." Panic attack averted. As I became more familiar with Drummond at night, I walked everywhere. The park was in the center of town, so if I needed to get a drink of water, I only needed to walk a few blocks to get one. No worries. Every so often, I would meet someone who was walking around too. My buddy Doug and I wandered all over town more than a few times. We even found a ladder behind the Co-op where we could climb on top of the feed building and watch downtown from a secret perch. It was awesome. One day I told my friend John about walking around town at night. He said that he and his brothers did that once in a while. I asked if they wanted to meet up and roam around for a while. He said he was up for it. So that Friday night, I put the note on the door and headed out. I was walking past the trees near the back of the park when I heard "PSSST". I stopped dead in my tracks to listen. "PSSSST"! There it was again! Where the heck was it coming from? Suddenly, John and his little brother popped out of the bushes and waved me into the shadows of the park. For me, wandering around town was brazenly strolling down the middle of the road. For John and his brothers, it was a covert operation. I had the best time that night because I wasn't just wandering from street light to street light. I was dodging light altogether. I was a freakin' ninja jumping from shadow to shadow in an attempt to do absolutely nothing without anyone seeing me do it. I eventually went back to just walking down the middle of the road, but I now knew all the spots to hide if I needed to duck out of sight. Being grown up now, I still have a lack of sleep that hangs around. Whenever it does, I get nostalgic about Drummond at night.

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