Three Are Necessary

My body is conditioned to arise at 5:45AM or so.  I roll, I turn, I check the clock on the phone and before six, I’m up, out of my bed and making my way down the stairs.  First things first:  I need to pop my contact lenses in so the world isn’t a haze.  Gym clothes . . . now use the rest room and pour a glass of grapefruit juice.  Then I get the girls up and we head to the gym.

It’s been that way for the last few months and it’s been a good routine.  I was almost certain it would be compromised this morning though.  Last night necessitated shot after shot of Chinese paint-thinner with a large group.  “Here this is the third toast to our bright and shining future!  Three!  Three are necessary.”  I knew this event was coming for a while.  I wasn’t sure how to play it.  If you say: I will not drink even one drop of alcohol you’re allowed to demure with minimal rudeness and not partake.  If you sip even the hint of a toast, you’re obliged to complete the ritual.

I partook.  I toasted, toasted again, received toasts, found people who needed toasts, suggested other people approach other people about toasts and always, with a look of utmost seriousness, finished what I was suggesting we ought to finish.  And I did my best as one does to keep a tally of how many tombstones I was kicking over.  Initially the number six seems like a firm point from which to defend any further progression.  But when seven is before you the resolution fades in your rear view mirror as a modest early evening on-ramp.  And it goes like this till fortunately it becomes clear that the time for Chinese daring has passed. The bravest are wobbling and it'll all be over soon.  People have completed the obligatory.  They are beginning to head home.

It took a while to order a cab, but I got home all right and checked emails and had some water and an aspirin just in case, and headed off to bed.  This was the night I emerged from as I considered my iPhone at 5:45 the next morning.  5:45AM.  Right.  Tired, fatigued, enervated, but not too much so.  I asked myself if I could do it and was surprised to hear “yes.”  Underneath it all I think part of what I realized is that almost any time I head to bed, I still seem to wake up t the same time in the morning.   Also, if the gym routine is well calloused, it takes more than a few toasts to dissuade some of its normalcy in the morning.  Good on ya'. 

Friday 4/21/17