Stay Awake vs Beauty Sleep

A while ago our Youth Group decided to have a stay-awake as a fundraiser to cover our costs for this year’s Youth Day (Jugendtag) t-shirts. That stay awake but was supposed to happen tonight. Actually, its happening right now as I am typing this. I should be there, typing it this blog in the church hall, but instead I am in my room, getting ready to go to bed. I lasted about three hours and then decided that I am too old for this crap. After 27 years, even though I still feel young at heart, I didn’t feel like hanging around juvenile delinquents (I miss those days) and instead opted to go to Edelweiss with Ulrike and Uwe and then catch some zzzzz’s. I get little sleep as it is. Might as well sleep tonight.

I was disappointed to see an almost empty Edelweiss. Usually it is buzzing with noise and happy drunken people. Not this time. It took me a while to realised why this was so. The Austrian band was not playing tonight. Bummer. After half a litre of beer and a Jagermeister, we moved to the Blue Goose, my favourite hangout for girls’ night out. Though this time it wasn’t just girls, as Uwe was there of course, and his friend Deon.

That turned out to be a barrel of laughter. We sat inside to avoid the chilly weather outside and watched an Afrikaans two-man band (ok one was a woman) finish their last two songs. There was a freaky old man lurking nearby who loved to play his air-guitar and talked to anyone who cared (or didn’t care) to listen. He was hilarious! He was dressed alright I suppose, but his general appearance made him look almost like a hobo if you looked at his long grey unkempt beard and the way he kept on scratching himself.

After minutes of watching this creature, Deon and I started to scratch ourselves too. Kind of like when you watch someone yawning. Its contagious. After the band finished, some classic rock songs came on and there he went playing his air guitar again. I struggled to control my giggles. We warned each other not to make any eye contact with him lest he comes and talks to us, but he did anyway. First to ask us for a cigarette and then to ask us if the Sharks had played today. Uwe told him that yes, they won today, thinking that they were playing tomorrow and thus tell a little white lie to this old man. Lie, he did. Little did he know that the Sharks had in fact played today, and that they lost to the Force. Uwe was shocked. Lol.

Eventually I started to feel sorry for this man as he counted the last of his coins to see if he could buy another drink. Sure, one shouldn’t feel sorry for a man who spent all his money on alcohol and reeked of it. Not at all. But I felt bad that he was a loner and no one really seemed to pay any attention to him. I’d hate to be alone.

I couldn’t laugh at him anymore and I was glad when we finally paid the bill and left. I sure hope he wasn’t driving anywhere cause he wasn’t in any state to drive. But by the way he looked, I somehow doubted that he even had a cat – though appearances can be deceiving. I have learnt the hard to never judge a book by its cover.

Despite that, I had a good time tonight. It was what I needed. Now its time for me to get my beauty sleep!