Homework. Again.

“Bill, be sure to do your homework first, THEN you can go out to play.” On her first day back in the workforce at a new job, she knew I’d get home before she did and wanted to cover all her bases.

“Right, Mom.” And I meant to follow her directions. However, by the time I got home from a long and dreary day of academia, the last thing I wanted to do was more schoolwork. It’s not that I intentionally disobeyed. I just forgot, an event that seemed to happen with some regularity involving things I didn’t like. I’d simply do my homework between dinner and bedtime. Piece of cake.

The end of supper meant evening television programs, and I was powerless to resist. Spy dramas, comedies, adventures, Westerns, science fiction and even the odd documentary turned me into a willing slave of popular culture. So much so that I can still recite commercial jingles from more than six decades past.

Mom enforced bedtime with an iron hand, which ruled out staying up late. I’d already knocked out the easy stuff, reading assignments, but the bone-crushing drudgery of arithmetic and penmanship loomed.

Fortunately, I had an ace up my sleeve. Bob had told me of a way to get up at a predetermined time without an alarm clock. Right before I fell asleep, I repeated the time I wanted to rise, over and over. It worked like magic.

Refreshed from a few hours of sleep and free from distractions in a quiet house, I slogged through what wasn’t important enough to do when I had the time, but was now so critical that I had to lose sleep to do it. Almost two hours later, I’d finished and went back to bed, vowing never to do it again.

I did it again.