Opinions from a five-year-old staying-awake aficionado
By Patrick Vaillancourt, Contributor
We at the Other Press will stop at nothing to provide you with quality content every week. We get our stories from knowledgeable sources and present you with expert analysis on the things you need to know. In keeping with this tradition of quality journalism, I’d like to introduce our newest humour columnist: the five-year-old version of me.
The newspaper man told me to write about what I think. I want to ride my bike right now, but the newspaper man scared me into doing this. He has a big beard and oftentimes, a strange voice. I don’t want to make the newspaper man angry, so I have to do this. I hate this work. I hate this as much as I hate naptime.
Naptime really sucks. Teacher makes me do naptime at school, too. I saw her go outside during naptime to smoke those cigarettes that smell like Uncle Bill’s jacket. I don’t understand why teacher makes me do this at school when mommy already makes me go to bed at 7 p.m. Sleeping is no fun—I dream of scary monsters all the time. The monsters are even more scary than the newspaper man. They make me pee my bed.
Even mommy doesn’t seem to like bedtime. I don’t know why she does it. I can hear screaming from mommy and daddy’s bedroom almost every night. Daddy says mommy gets scared of the one-eyed monster that lives in their room. It’s the only time I hear mommy talking to God.
Naps suck. I would rather play on the monkey bars with Jimmy. Jimmy’s my neighbour. He’s really good at the monkey bars. I wish I could stay up forever with Jimmy. We could play video games and watch cartoons all the time.
Think of all the benefits of me not sleeping: if I didn’t sleep, mommy wouldn’t have to wash the pee off my bed sheets.
Or I could stay up with daddy. He stays up really late. He only sleeps after he drinks a bottle of his wobbly pop. I call it “wobbly pop” because when daddy drinks it, he walks a lot like my younger sister. My younger sister is just learning to walk. I’m not supposed to drink the wobbly pop. It smells like the pee from my bed sheets. I don’t know why he drinks with a bottle—only babies drink from bottles.
Anyway, naps really suck. I think life would be better without sleeping time. No monsters, no problem.
