“The night is dark, and full of terrors.”
So says one of the characters on the popular TV series Game of Thrones. The same character also gives birth to an adult-sized shadow demon that crawls out of her womb and floats straight to an enemy camp to murder a rival. So, you know, grain of salt.
I have, however, come to understand a new kind of night terror now that I’m a parent. I cherish my sleep but the thing about sleep is that you are not awake. And if you’re not awake, you can’t see or hear things that are going on around you.
As a parent, you spend all your waking hours making sure that your children are safe. When you are sleeping, however, you don’t know what they are doing. As long as your children are quiet, they could do whatever they want every night during your deep sleep hours and you’ll never know it.
One night a couple of years ago, I awoke to find my elder son, then just three years old, calmly sitting on the couch in our living room eating a box of crackers. I shuffled him off to bed, chuckling at his toddler audacity. It wasn’t until the next morning that I found the extent of his midnight roaming. On my iPhone were dozens of photos taken around the house, mostly just fuzzy dark shots of the floor.
A few things amazed me about this discovery: 1) I didn’t know he could reach my iPhone perched on a high ledge 2) I didn’t know he knew how to use my iPhone 3) His photography skills were already better than mine.
A few years later, I awoke to find my younger son sitting in his crib, casually flipping through a soccer magazine. He couldn’t yet read and he also couldn’t get out of his crib. Or so I thought. Later that day, I was shocked when he launched into a long rant about the deplorable conditions facing the migrant workers building World Cup stadiums in Qatar.
You hear stories about kids who wake up in the middle of the night and wander right out of the house without their parents knowing about it. Luckily, that has never happened in my house — as far as I know. I suppose one of the boys could have slipped out one night and gone for a forest romp with a pack of wild cougars. If he was quiet enough on the way in and wiped off his muddy boots, we’d never know until we discovered the dead rabbits stashed under his pillow.
Deep down, though, all parents know the truth. As youngsters, I’m sure nearly all of us got into shenanigans while our parents were fast asleep just down the hall. Don’t deny it. Even my wife, who could have been the next Mother Teresa if she hadn’t fallen for my charms, has admitted to at least one late-night shimmy out the basement window to meet up with friends. She insists that it was only to go to Wendy’s for ice cream treats.
For the sake of brevity, let’s just say that I also only snuck out once and it was also to go to Wendy’s.
Our parents never seemed to know what was up. Or did they? Now that I’m a parent, I’ve realized that when the battle is sleep versus parenting, sleep often wins.
So I’m at peace with it now. If the boys are silent and don’t wreck anything — most of all, themselves — I’ll never know. Ignorance is bliss, eh boys?
Just watch out for those shadow demons.
----Andy Prest is sports editor for the North Shore News and writes a biweekly column.
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@Sports_Andy
