Goodnight, sweet people of the day, hard workers while the sun is up, obedient to Nature and how the world is run. Sunlight and a few moments of twilight, a well-deserved dinner, and goodnight as you sink into your soft bed and pleasant dreams.
It’s our turn now. We are the night people and we work in darkness.
We work in darkness where you don’t see us, but we are there when the terrors and beasts of the night come after you: First responders, police, firefighters, soldiers and sailors near and far, people used to the darkness.
We work in darkness caring for day people stranded injured or sick on the dark shore: nurses, doctors on call, emergency room personnel. We haul and roll out the boxes of goods to re-stock the shelves that you emptied. We clean things that you soiled.
We maintain through the dark night of the technological soul the electricity and gas that keep you warm or cool, keeps your food in safety, keeps the water pure. We are there underneath day’s happy home, like secret animals burrowing in the dirt.
But that is easy. Easy to praise a nurse or a firefighter. Easy to praise the people who are required to work through the night, for one noble cause or another. Saving lives is obvious. Good enough.
Who populates the night? Who works in shadows? Once again, the underworld of transgressors and thieves, prostitutes and dealers, makes it easy to separate your sunny self. Bad people work in shadows.
Still too easy. We work in shadows. Your breakfast is our dinner, without the pleasantries. Our pillows are lit with morning light. Our clock settings would appall you…Ohmygod he goes to bed at 9 AM!! Wakes up at 3 PM! What a lazy bum! Or weird, like a vampire or an owl fleeing the light of reason.
Meet the night shift: At restaurants and gas stations and convenience stores open 24/7. Security guards and watchmen. Entertainers and gamers and casino workers. The casinos and the gamerooms never close. The computer programmer trying to make a deadline. The sysadmin waiting for trouble. The night clerk at that luxury hotel where you sleep soundly. The technicians at communication centers, telephones, television stations, power plants. The truck driver on the big road, the engineer on the night train, the prison guard. You may not know these people are there, you may even dislike them, but they are on the job, and you wouldn’t do it even if someone paid you.
But the worst are those “creative” types. There they are, drawing on that comic book page, writing a chapter of a mystery novel, composing a piece of music that may never be heard. Why are they up doing that stuff at 3 AM? Or even 6 AM? A “good” writer will keep 9 to 5 hours like a “good” worker, right? What justification do these low-earning parasites have for working after midnight? Because their day job keeps them occupied during the “real” workday, someone might sensibly say. But some of them don’t even have day jobs. It’s one deadline, one contract, one gig after the next. And they CHOOSE to work through the quiet night and into the harsh morning light. Perverse and unhealthy.
The sky is turning a sickly shade of greenish blue. The chapter remains unfinished, the frame as yet unfilled, the color unmixed, the notes unharmonized. Here comes that mean old sun. Hide, night friends, don’t let the grinning burning sun see you, until your time mercifully returns.
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This “Night People” rant was inspired by a piece by the great American humorist Jean Shepherd (1921-1999) published in MAD magazine in April 1957. It was illustrated by the brilliant artist and cartoonist Wally Wood. The article was titled “The Night People vs. “Creeping Meatballism””. In it, Shepherd riffed on the absurdities of his day, whether silly car designs (now treasured collectors’ items!) inane advertising, or deceptive product packaging. It was not about the literal “night people” who work through the night, but about conformity and lack of imagination which “night people” rebelled against and “day people” dumbly accepted. I am writing about a more literal, real night world. There are plenty more absurdities for many a night’s orange rant.
I did that for years.
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