3 AM and Breaking Curfew

3 AM and breaking curfew; why? No other reason than it seemed like a good thing to do, just because … well, because we were all fighting sleep, afraid to admit we couldn’t stay up all night as we had planned; even as the party wound down, caffeinated Coke and sugar-rich cookies no longer kept us as alert, as awake as they had earlier when the party started, long before midnight, long before now.

We’d sung around the piano, Chuck and Jay at the keyboard, sung all the popular songs of the late sixties, the folk tunes, rock musicals, Beatles’ songs or Carpenters’ lyrics, even the old hymns harmonized by our youth group at church. We’d exhausted all the songs in the music books and in Jay’s and Chuck’s repertoire of songs they knew. And we’d tired of the games, board games and card games and cut-throat Twister, darts, pool on Jay’s new pool table, careful not to hurt the felt or break a cue stick, and tired of the made up games of high school boys spending the night together. We’d swapped stories, our exploits real or imagined, our lives revealed, laid bare to each other, secrets told, the unknown loves of our lives, but as the night wore on, turning to early morning, someone, could have been any one of us, who knows who, who even cares now, but someone, any one of us, suggested a walk, a walk just to see who else might be up at that ungodly hour of a Saturday morning, a walk on the wild side for us, for it was well past the city-imposed curfew set for teens. But the cold air and exercise just might possibly keep us awake, help us to fight that natural urge to sleep, knowing as soon as one fell asleep, we’d all follow suit, one at a time until the only noises heard would be the grandfather clock ticking in the hall and the sound of softly snoring teenage boys.

So the five of us, Jay & Chuck & Dale & Andy & I left quietly through the front door and turned left down Middle Street, headed nowhere in particular, just walking.

You’d be surprised how many people are awake at 3 AM, lights glowing yellow in upstairs rooms or downstairs kitchens of houses sitting next to other darkened houses where the weekend sleepers slept in. There was an occasional car heard on a side street, a parallel street indicating someone else was still up and out, maybe someone heading home from a late night party or a drinking binge at the local bar, or maybe someone headed to work, early morning shift at the shipyard or somewhere else. But not a concern for us out walking, we teenage boys breaking curfew, 3 AM, just because.

The cars that concerned us most, though, the ones coming up behind us or headed toward us, cars hidden by headlights blinding us, revealing us out walking. This would be no late night reveler or early morning shift worker, but a police car prowling the streets, looking for us, curfew breakers, young people out where they shouldn’t be at that time of day, young men out looking for trouble; this we knew for sure. And though we knew we weren’t trouble-makers, boys out looking for mischief, merely good church-going kids fighting sleep and honor, we knew, too, the cops would lump us all together as juvenile delinquents, and individually we envisioned our arrest, handcuffed and jailed, or worse, having to call our dads to come bail us out, common criminals that we were; jail seemed the better option.

So at the first sight of lights glaring, blinding us or creating long shadows in front of us, we did what any criminal would do: every boy for himself, running into the nearby bushes or down a driveway to hide, ducking for cover, evading arrest, guilt pushing us to run, to hide, to seek escape, avoiding capture and our fathers’ wrath.

But our worries were unnecessary, for only a couple times did a car sneak up on us, despite our elaborate plans for evasion, and after each false alarm, we came together on the street again, out from our hiding, evading, and started again our walk, not a word said about the car, marveling only at the large number of people up at that time of morning on a Saturday, the car that had passed becoming nothing more than another car on a side street, a parallel street, someone headed home, like us, safe once again, secure in being together, a group of friends out for a walk, 3 AM, just because.