Things I Hate #27.5: All-Nighters
There was once something deliciously naughty about an all-nighter. My mum – one who has always been an early-to-bed, early-to-rise type - never let us sleep in , not the way other kids got to sleep in, anyway. Summer vacations occasionally allowed the luxury of sleeping until 9:00 am, if one can possibly sleep through the sound of the coffee grinder and vacuum, both of which were no respecters of time, nor the early morning hours. And if we slept in until some ungodly hour, say 10:00 am, especially on a week day, we’d face a rude awakening. Literally. Usually in the form of the covers being ripped from us while we were dragged, kicking and screaming (again, literally) onto the cold-hardwood floor.
So all-nighters were deliciously naughty. An all-nighter was a rebellious bite at something my mother hated – the midnight hours – and on would force her to let us sleep in until at least 10 am.
A decade ago, an all-nighter was an entirely different beast. An all-nighter meant that Kiana and I would gorge ourselves with pizza and belch loudly, furthermore rebelling against the societal constraints upon “proper young women.” We would guzzle soda by the bottle – and I do mean two litre bottle – and find ourselves sufficiently caffeinated for a long night of tom foolery. The tom foolery, which began with shrill giggles and demonstrative sing-along sessions with the boy band de-jour, would spiral rapidly downwards as the night progressed. With few diregressions, in which case we found ourselves attempting to dodge blush-worthy hotline commercials during the commercial breaks in Mall Rats, we would invariably take on the appearance of caffeine-crashed zombies, riveted by Invasion of the Body Snatchers. And it was the damnedest thing; Invasion of the Body Snatchers seemed to always play on A&E in the wee hours, as though the network somehow sensed Kiana’s presence in our living room. To this day, we still embrace the imagery of pea pods as symbolic of our friendship. After watching Invasion, the sun would come up and we would release our inner hobbits, feasting on not one, but two breakfasts (of anything from pizza to hotdogs, but never real breakfast food) before imbibing the rest of the caffeine and returning to shrill fan-girl sing-alongs.
Those were the glory days. Junior high is the era in which the all-nighter is praised as a rite de passage, a coming of age. It makes sense really. In childhood we fear the dark and cling to day’s last dredges of light, plugging in night lights and begging our parents to leave the hall light on, so that the littlest bit of light will shine through the cracks around the door and prevent a monster from gobbling us up, should we need to hop from bed and dash to the toilet – something we’re only bold enough to do if the alternative seems to be wetting the bed. And so the all-nighter signifies conquest over the unfound fear of the dark of night, I think. For me it did, anyway. But I was unable to sleep after seeing Signs, the M. Night Shamalangadingdong film, for the first time; I was 15 at the time.
But, having fully embraced the midnight hours, writing until the sun comes up or reading well into the morning, the sense of conquest in the all-nighter has drained away, disappearing down the proverbial plug hole of age. It’s gone. And that’s okay. With a full plate to juggle, the all-nighter isn’t something we embrace so freely. It has no novelty, and in this stage of life, it speaks more to the ball and chain of responsibility than the fledgling freedom of adolescence.
While I’m not old, I definitely don’t bounce back quite the same way from an all-nighter, especially when I’m too busy to sit down and eat one breakfast, let alone two.
Thus, I hate all-nighters. I hate the fact my carefree adolesnces has slipped through my fingers. And I hate the fact that when I stay up all night, I’m hammering out an epistemology paper that, frankly, I fear isn’t worth the paper it’s printed on. I would happily return to the days in which an all-nighter was characterized by two giggling girls devouring a giant pizza and soaking up the escapades of Jay and Silent Bob.
























