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I
have a bad habit. I am addicted to Pepsi. I even drink the gunk
for breakfast. Of course, like many addicts of assorted substances,
I've enjoyed the bliss that comes only with the ardent denial
of my sorry condition.
So bad
has it been that it wasn't until a bus ride downtown a few days
ago, when a fellow passenger stared at me in disgust and asked why
I was happily guzzling Pepsi at seven in the morning, that I finally
confronted my demons and asked why I was not imbibing coffee or
orange juice or something more "suitable" for so early in the day.
But
I also had to ask why my fellow passenger found my behaviour so
remarkable that he risked the taboo of talking to a stranger on
the bus. Why did he care? And indeed, why did I care that he cared?
Why was the timing of my pathetic, yet otherwise innocent, behaviour
so striking?
It's
situations like this that give me the ripe opportunity to appreciate
just how much of our daily lives are still determined by artificial,
culture-bound time constraints--the expectation that certain things
are to happen only at certain times of the day.
The
neurotic expectation has become deeply ingrained in our psyche,
particularly because it has been devoutly in the service of the
"business day." Although the new economy has certainly spawned creative
variations of it, it's still as insidious a rhythm as its natural
counterpart: the 24-hour cycle of day and night.
Let's
consider a typical "weekday." Why is it that the station manager
at K-ROCK radio feels that whenever I wake up, I need invariably
to be greeted by Jim-Bob Johnnie and his gruff, hillbilly voice
reminding me at 140 decibels that a wiener truck has overturned
on the #5 freeway and backed up traffic for miles?
Why
is it expected that I then involuntarily subject myself to a cold
shower--which Mother Nature could never have thought healthy for
any normal virile man--when I could just as easily have the same
shower in the evening? Why must I take a coffee break at 10 a.m.
and eat lunch at noon, when I could nibble my salami sandwich at
two or three in the afternoon while watching "General Hospital"
on my little portable TV?
Why
must I evacuate my workstation precisely when Olga, our cleaning
lady, comes in with her Hoover and that cassette player spewing
those endless Bobby Vinton tracks? Why does my stomach automatically
growl and my mouth salivate when Dan Rather comes on for the evening
news? Indeed, why do I watch the evening news with Dan Rather when
I could be watching the Playboy Channel?
I wonder
just how much I have unwittingly allowed myself to internalise these
seemingly non-negotiable expectations. Sometimes I feel like one
of Pavlov's dogs. In fact, I often wonder how easy it would be to
force me on my kitchen floor and feast on Kibbles 'n Bits at precisely
the same time Sparky does.
I wonder
if Sparky is as aware of all the subtle little indicators that tell
me my day should soon come to an end--like when I see Vanna turning
letters. Why is it only seven in the evening and I'm already pulling
out my daybook and reviewing the next day's activities, which, incidentally,
had to be completely rescheduled earlier today because the office
is going to be closed Thursday for carpet cleaning?
Why
is the highlight of my evening taking out the trash, clipping my
toenails, and drinking a litre of Metamucil so I stay happily regular
for the next 24 hours? And why do I somehow not feel regular?
All
this, which strikes many other cultures as patently bizarre, continues
for five days of every week, and culminates in that quintessentially
North-American experience, "the weekend"--the icon of which is that
frazzle-faced Joe decked out in a fishing hat, Hawaiian shirt, Bermuda
shorts, and rubber flippers, hamburger flipper in one hand, and
a golf club in the other. The weekend is the time he's expected
to cut loose and "live the good life"--unfortunately, even when
he doesn't want to.
Perhaps
this is why so many of us have betrayed our biology and become nocturnal.
Perhaps we can consider these chronologically appropriate expectations
as memes of sorts, the social equivalents of genetic traits. We
can push our increasingly nocturnal ways to introduce precisely
the evolutionary deviation that will topple this mechanical existence
and return us to life more akin to that of our happier ancestors
in the jungle.
The
night is an ideal vehicle for this. Aside from Susan Power's squealing
and the kitchen faucet that always starts dripping just after you've
fallen asleep, the night is fairly devoid of chronological markers.
Flashing motel signs, the McDonald's arches, train whistles, chirping
crickets. You see and hear them randomly: midnight, two a.m., three
a.m., five a.m.
You
co-exist with these sights and sounds for 12 hours while you and
your actions are invisible to the world; while you gleefully vacuum
your house and balance your chequebook in the nude; while you incubate
your best ideas and produce your most creative works; while you
finally lose yourself in whatever you do precisely because you're
not expected to do so.
Perhaps
part of this helps account for the allure of sleep when we're depressed--a
retreat into a liquid, free-flowing, timeless state devoid of the
outside's neurotic expectations--or the allure of an intricately
wired world where time moves far too quickly even to be perceived.
Perhaps this is why I've often been labeled a vampire--a Pepsi-guzzling
one at that. (I even keep my curtains drawn during the day.)
But
while the daytime world is busy toiling away, ostensibly in the
search for "better living," night dwellers and others are quietly
turning the tide. My drinking Pepsi at seven in the morning and
repulsing everyone on the bus is but my small contribution to their
search for a different kind of better living.
I think
next week I'll actually drink Dr. Pepper on the bus downtown, this
time at six in the morning, and see if I can shake things up a little
more. The pop's on me if you'll join me.
Copyright
© 2001 Eddy Elmer. All Rights Reserved.
Eddy Elmer likes pop!
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