The Hawken Home Stressed Values - Like Sleep Deprivation and Back Aches

Do you like to sleep in on your day off? I have found, later on in life, that I like to as well. While under the roof of the Hawken Family, however, I was taught that rest and relaxation were vile, reprehensible things to be abhorred and shunned.

Saturday mornings came, shining school-free down onto the quiet village of Fairwood, with the promise of a couple quiet hours when I could catch up on the sleep I'd missed that week. Falser hopes have never been imagined. With the tone of voice that would frighten a fair-to-midland sized grizzly bear, I would be forcibly torn from my bed and lectured in that loving, gonna-rip-your-face-off tone that only Hal can muster, about the evils of slothfulness, laziness and getting enough sleep.

"Teenagers," he would growl, "should be in bed at 8pm and up at 2am, with frequent push-up breaks throughout the night to break up all that superfluous 'Rapid Eye Movement.' Thats what I did when I was a kid."

He would then pause, forget what he was saying, and start talking about diesel engines and/or the looming specter of the UN.

If I by any chance fell back asleep after he left the room, all hell would break loose. Hal's remedy would involve ice water, throwing of my belongings into the street, vague threats involving llamas, and the assignment that Ben & I crush all of the aluminum cans he'd picked up and stored in garbage bags on the back porch.*

This was a consistent pattern till I finally left home for college.
The resultant effect of this lifelong abstinence from sleeping is threefold:

1. I now pass out at every unoccupied second.
2. I'm mildly deranged.
3. Hal still does this when I come to visit.

Another effect, not big enough to warrant a fourth numeral or a word as ugly as "fourfold," is that I now am plagued with guilt every time I feel well rested. But guilt, I've found, is easily assuaged by sleeping. Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go take a nap.

*Please Note: Our father regularly came home grinning and would announce to Ben & I that he had a surprise for us. As would be expected, our adolescent minds would immediately conjure up sugarplums, nintendo games and Vanilla Ice mixtapes. Once we'd thoroughly worked ourselves up with excitement, he would gleefully present us with a torn garbage bag full of dirty, aluminum cans soaked in rancid beer, (which cans he had found lying in parking lots and on the shoulder of busy sections of the road), announcing, "You've got your work cut out for you, boys." To this very day, we meet any suggestion of a pleasant surprise from Hal with the question, "More cans?"