Last night I slept on a couch for the first time in a long long time. A group of family friends stayed over and my room quickly went to a young mother and her baby. I did not mind of course, I would much rather them have my bed but I don’t think I can do the couch thing anymore. And I’m sure I’ll be smelling baby stinch, you know spit up and that diaper smell for days to come. I used to be able to sleep on concrete; I could wake up, be fine, and head to class. Last night I slept maybe 15 minutes throughout the whole night. Snatch was cinemax at 2 am..one of my all time favorite movies, if you haven’t seen it be sure to check it out. If it had not been for Snatch there wouldn’t be one good thing I could say about last night. When I got up I felt like I had been hit in the lower back with a bat by a roided up Barry Bonds who had just been dumped. My neck hurt so bad I couldn’t turn to the left side to save my life. As I approach my next birthday, I’m starting to realize I’m getting older in more ways than one.
It could be the fact that I majored partly in Journalism, but every morning now I read the paper, check the internet for news, watch the news on tv, and then of course as every guy does, I catch Sportscenter. This was the same routine my late grandfather had minus the Sportscenter and internet. I also drink about a pot of coffee and check the weather. This all takes place before 8 am.
There was a time 3 years ago, during my fratastic days at Ole Miss living in the ATO house, where I did not wake up before noon on any day for anything or anyone. My earliest class was a 2 pm and there were times when I rolled out of bed 1:55 threw on some clothes and a hat, grabbed a coke, and walked five minutes to that class barely making it. Somehow during this time I still managed to pick up dates? I guess I didn’t smell as bad as I thought. However, most days I rolled out of bed between 12 and 12:30 and would walk downstairs and have lunch for my first meal of the day. The whole time I lived at the house I never ate breakfast there. You may be thinking wow this guy is lazy sleeping all day, well your wrong, I slept the same amount as you but I was on a different schedule.
You see, in a Fraternity house it doesn’t matter when you want to go to bed, you won’t be able to sleep until everyone else has gone to sleep. Sure you could get in bed at 11 pm but at 2 or 3 am someone was bound to come through the halls yelling and screaming, throwing trashcans, blaring music and carrying around a case of beer. You might as well just get up and grab a beer and hang out because you definitely weren’t going to get any sleep. We all learned this quickly. Now it seems the only thing I do at 2 or 3 am is get up to go to the bathroom and bump into walls sleepwalking.
There were also nights, wonderful nights, where I would not even get back to Oxford until 9 am the next day. These were trips to Tunica, Ms. Tunica is located an hour and fifteen minutes from Oxford and many nights when the bars closed at 1 am we would all pile in a car and head to Tunica (yes we would always get a sober driver). Gambling was not the best thing about Tunica, of course many times I somehow walked out of there with more money than I came with but why we went was for the free drinks and the free buffets. Not just any buffet, were talking Paula Dean buffets at The Grand and an all you can eat crab legs and lobster tails buffet at The Horseshoe. I would literally eat crab legs for three hours straight. Now if I eat anything at night I can’t sleep because of terrible heartburn, thank you Zantac 150. I love poker and I love blackjack but if I’m at a casino you can’t drag me away from the roulette table. Somehow I always hit, and I triple up on black 28. The date of my birthday which sadly is this Sunday. When I hit that...it was always a great night....Nowadays it’s hard to get me to get in a car to go anywhere that takes an hour and a half. Not even to our family mountain house in North Carolina which is only three hours away from Atlanta. I guess all of the college road trips and the five-and-a-half hour drives from Oxford to Atlanta did me in. 358 miles to be exact. There are just certain things now I can’t or will not do. Wish I had never taken for granted being able to sleep on a couch without feeling beat up in the morning or not minding riding in the car. Those days are all gone. If anyone knows how to make my neck feel better please leave a comment.