Happy Time

Well the south side of chicago
Is the baddest part of town
And if you go down there
You better just beware
Of a man named leroy brown

Now leroy more than trouble
You see he stand ’bout six foot four
All the downtown ladies call him treetop lover
All the mens just call him sir

And it’s bad, bad leroy brown
The baddest man in the whole damn town
Badder than old king kong
And meaner than a junkyard dog

Now leroy he a gambler
And he like his fancy clothes
And he like to wave his diamond rings
In front of everybody’s nose
He got a custom continental
He got an eldorado too
He got a 32 gun in his pocket for fun
He got a razor in his shoe

And it’s bad, bad leroy brown
The baddest man in the whole damn town
Badder than old king kong
And meaner than a junkyard dog

Well friday bout a week ago
Leroy shootin’ dice
And at the edge of the bar
Sat a girl named doris
And ooh that girl looked nice
Well he cast his eyes upon her
And the trouble soon began
And leroy brown learned a lesson
’bout messin’ with the wife of a jealous man

And it’s bad, bad leroy brown
The baddest man in the whole damned town
Badder than old king kong
And meaner than a junkyard dog,

Well the two men took to fightin’
And when they pulled them from the floor
Leroy looked like a jigsaw puzzle
With a couple of pieces gone

And it’s bad, bad leroy brown
The baddest man in the whole damn town
Badder than old king kong
And meaner than a junkyard dog
Bad, Bad Leroy Brown by Jim Croce

My alarm clock went off at 3:45 this morning. It not only woke me up, it woke the baby as well.
She was laughing, smiling and having herself one of the best mornings a baby can have. It makes me wonder how much of the morning blahs are actually just mental.
The smiling, laughing and cooing at 3:45am made my whole day. It really doesn't take very much to alter my day. Just little things can make a day great, by the same token just little things can make my day crap.
This is most likely learned behavior as my daughter seems to be able to be happy no matter the time of day it is. She has no concept that at 3am you're supposed to be tired, she's just tired when she's tired and that is all there is to it. Wouldn't it be simpler if everyone lived that way? Rather than making ourselves go to sleep at "bedtime" we just go to sleep when we're tired whether that time is 6pm or 11pm it really wouldn't matter. The same thing with dinner time, the baby eats when she's hungry, my wife and I try to eat at a certain approved "dinnertime".
We learned these appropriate times from our parents and from the greater society as a whole. Now I know that I have written about society teaching kids in a few past blogs, but this is almost teaching them to ignore their bodies and only obey the clock on the wall.
There is something wrong with telling kids they have to eat when they are not hungry and then getting angry when they don't eat. As infants we accept that they will eat when they are hungry because infants, more or less, can't be trained. Maybe we all would be a little happier if we were never trained to ignore the sensations that our body is made to send us. I am going to try to live that way for a week, only eating when I am hungry and going to sleep when I am tired. Maybe instead of trying and hoping my daughter will learn my timeline, I will try and learn hers.