I had a deal with my parents.  If I used the potty regularly I would get to sleep in the big boy bed. I have made enough deposits, so yesterday they made good on their part of the bargain.

A big boy bed is very comfortable. It has a railing so you don’t fall out.  My railing has a light on it, which is intended to be a night light so that the big boy is not scared.  It is a decent night light but functions much better as a reading light.

It was 3:30 in the morning. I wanted to get in a little light reading, perhaps Guess How Much I love You. I often don’t have time for reading during the day because I am too busy building things, asking for things without saying please, and running around trees in tight circles.  I got out of the big boy bed and walked into my parents room.  ‘Excuse me,’ I said.  I never say excuse me.  My parents didn’t answer.  They were asleep.  ‘Excuse me,’ I said again, ‘but you said one book in the bed.’

My father opened his eyes and said, ‘What?’ I thought that was a good start. He could have said what everyone says at 3:30 in the morning, which is, ‘Do you know that time it is?  It’s 3:30 in the morning.’

The line is customarily delivered with an acute sense of outrage, on a rising, slightly strangled inflection.  There was no tone of outrage in my dad’s voice, though. As he often tells anyone who will listen, he is a veteran parent, with two other children besides me who are now grown. I don’t think he should make so big a deal out of this, but he won’t stop referencing it.  From my perspective, having been in business for just three years now, experience is overrated. He got out of bed and we walked into my room and got a book.  I turned on my light to start reading.

Guess How Much I Love You is a wonderfully heartwarming book, but it is not the kind of page turner you need at 3:30 in the morning.  I needed a Nazi-chasing Ken Follett saga or Grisham, not a story of a bunny getting hugs from his daddy.  So I walked out of my room, because I can do that now, and started to play with my blocks.

Construction is a noisy business.  There are city regulations preventing  it from being done at 3:45 in the morning, but I chose to ignore those laws, much like Uber ignores existing laws, or how Donald Trump speaks his mind.  When you are a truth teller, like Donald Trump, or a pre-schooler, or other part-time sociopath, you do not have to be politically correct. When you have a vision that happens to be illegal, and you are wealthy enough like Uber, you can get those laws fixed.

My father returned. He had word from the Ultimate Authority. ‘Mom says if you get out of the big boy bed again before the light comes, you have to go back in the crib.’ I was actually too sleepy to fight with him.  I was just awake enough, though, to bat back and forth his definition of ‘when the light comes’ like the Clintonesque lawyer that I am. ‘When the light comes?’ I asked, as though I had never before encountered the idea of dawn.

I slept through the dawn, and well past my usual breakfast time. But it had been a busy night, and a big boy bed is very comfortable.