The Night Time People

My parents are funny people. They rarely leave the house after 8:30 pm or so. They go to bed around 9 or 10 pm. Night time is an undiscovered world to them. They also think it’s dangerous at night, because that’s when the hoodlums come out (and when the news reports say that shootings, muggings and rapes happen). And granted, we live in the semi-ghetto (okay, not really. Okay, kind of.).

So one night, my sister is at my parents’ house baking something for her coworker’s birthday the next day and forgets an ingredient. She announces to my parents that she’s going to drive to the supermarket a couple blocks away to pick it up. My parents spazz out. My dad asks, “Why didn’t you buy that before?” Um. Cuz I forgot. “Is the supermarket even open still?” Um. It’s like, 8:45 p.m. “Maybe I should drive you.” No, it’s okay. I’m 25. I go out later than this most nights of the week.

Finally, my sister gets so frustrated with the conversation that she leaves to change and head out. By the time she gets downstairs, my mom is sitting there, dressed and ready to go. “What are you doing mom?” “Oh, I just thought I’d come with you.” She says this as though she’d just had a sudden urge to spend quality time with my sister and had a hankering for nectarines. Sneaky devil. But we’re too smart for that. We know the truth. Mom and dad are old school, paranoid, overprotective Asian parents. The story of my life.

So my sister finally relents and as they pull into the parking lot at 9:10 p.m., my mom says, “Wow, there’s cars here. Who are all these people?” As they enter the supermarket, my mom says, “Wow, there’s so many people here. People are out and shopping this late?”

I thought it was so mind blowing that in my parents’ minds, the world outside shuts down after 8 p.m. I thought this until this morning when I was riding the subway at 6:30 a.m. As I was walking to the station, I was looking at all the people up this early on a Saturday morning, and I thought, “Wow, who are all these people?” Jogging, walking their dogs, going to work. It was a world undiscovered. When I got to the station and hopped onto my train, I was marveling at how many people were actually on the train. Each two-seat row pretty much had at least one person sitting in it. “Who are all these people? What are they doing up during this ungodly hour on the weekend?” Then I realized, this is my version of when the world is shut down. In fact, this is the world my parents are a part of every morning. These are the people they see. These are the people they are familiar with and relate to. They weren’t so much overly paranoid (okay, maybe a little) as just very unaccustomed to the nighttime world. Hmm, I guess, we’re not that different after all.