It was with great delight that I read a few weeks ago of a group that's started to defend the rights of "owls"—people who can't string two thoughts together before noon but who ramp right up when "larks" are petering out for the day. Larks, aka early risers, have always enjoyed the general social consensus that "early bird gets the worm," while owls get tarred with the notion that we are lazy and maladjusted. But now we have B-Society, which is agitating for our equal rights with those annoying crack-of-dawn keeners.
I guess it’s apparent that I’m a hard-core owl—have been since I was a child. The most common way for me to fall asleep at night is with my reading light blazing in my face. I get fidgety when Craig casts us into darkness when he’s ready to drop off (which usually takes him two maddening seconds, even when I’m yammering into his ear with all my finally fully formed ideas). When the sun comes streaming through our skylight and side window in the morning, I hit my optimum sleep zone—that delicious, groggy period where everything is slow and dulled, muscles are heavy and seemingly resistant to anything but sinking into an even more comfortable position, and waking life seems like a TV show I can watch later on at my leisure.
So I am thrilled to see B-Society working so hard for my cause. The group bases its argument on science (it claims owls have a different circadian rhythm than larks) and the idea that it’s dumb to organize entire populations according to a schedule designed for the Industrial Revolution given we’re now in a fluid, globalized, many-time-zoned economic order.
- Do you love quiet mornings and active evenings?
- Do you feel life is too short for traffic jams?
- Are you at your most productive after 10 a.m.?
Then according to the website, you might be a B-Person (the group claims 10–15% of the population is).
There may be hope for us yet!
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