I can't remember where I found this, but can I tell you how hard it made me laugh?
Speaking of kids, my dad who, for the most part, treats his 4 children like the adults that we are has a tendency to want to give us a bedtime, still. Often when I talk with him at night he'll tell me at the end of the conversation that I it's "time for (me) to start winding down." Now that Laurel's in Sacramento with him, he's been pulling the bedtime on her, too.
So, at her request, I wrote a Bedtime Manifesto. Well, truthfully I stole large portions from 9 different speeches or writings, and then doctored them a bit. I'm thinking about giving an award to the person who can name all 9 documents/speeches.
Anyway, here's the manifesto for anyone who's interested:
I, the daughter of Clark Swenson, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common happiness, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and Clark’s posterity, do ordain and establish this Manifesto concerning the free decision of a bedtime.
When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one person to dissolve the juvinal bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of adulthood, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Adulthood and of Adulthood’s Power entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that should declare the causes which impel them to the separation of childish rules from the Standard of Adulthood.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that I am created equal to other adults, that I am endowed by my Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, the pursuit of Happiness, and the Freedom to put myself to bed when I deem the hour prudent.
Fourscore and seven minutes ago my father brought forth again the incontinent idea, conceived in childhood and dedicated to the proposition that I remain seven.
Now we are engaged in a great domestic war, testing whether that bedtime or any bedtime so anciently conceived and long ago dismantled can continue to be endured.
Father Figure Swenson, if you seek peace, if you seek prosperity for this familial union and the western United States, if you seek liberalization: Come here to this front room! Mr. Swenson, tear down this bedtime!
But why, some say, the liberal bedtime? Why choose this as our goal? And they may well ask why climb the highest mountain? Why, so many years ago, retire at 9:30pm or perhaps 7:00pm? We choose to go to bed at the time that best suits us! We choose to go to bed and do many other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win!
Freedom is indivisible, and when one man is enslaved, all are not free. When all are free, then we can look forward to that day when this condo will be joined as one and this country and this great Continent of America in a peaceful and hopeful globe. When that day finally comes, as it will, the people of East Sacramento can take sober satisfaction in the fact that they were in the front lines for a little over two decades of life.
All free men, wherever they may live, are citizens of an Adulthood with no parentally-imposed bedtime, and, therefore, as a free woman, I take pride in the words "Ich bin eine Erwachsene ohne Schlafenszeit."
My cause must be your cause too. Because it is not just young adults, but really it is all of us, who must overcome the crippling legacy of bigotry and injustice. And we shall overcome.
And so, my fellow condo-mate: Ask not what your bedtime can do for you—ask what my lack of imposed bedtime can do for me.
My fellow citizens of the world: ask not what Adulthood will do for you, but what together we can do for the freedom of man.
Yes, one day I will have a dream—at 2:00am.
Yes, one day I will have a dream—at 1:25am.
Yes, one day I will have a dream—at 12:15am.
Yes, one day I will have a dream—at 2:45am.
Yes, one day I will have a dream—at 12:55am.
Yes, one day I will have a dream—at 3:35am.
And if the condo is to be a great home, this freedom to retire to bed at my will must become true. So let bedtime freedom ring from the prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire. Let bedtime freedom ring from the mighty mountains of New York. Let bedtime freedom ring from the heightening Alleghenies of Pennsylvania!
Let bedtime freedom ring from the snow-capped Rockies of Colorado!
Let bedtime freedom ring from the curvaceous peaks of California!
But not only that; let bedtime freedom ring from Stone Mountain of Georgia!
Let bedtime freedom ring from Lookout Mountain of Tennessee!
Let bedtime freedom ring from every hill and every molehill of Mississippi. From every mountainside, let bedtime freedom ring.
When we let bedtime freedom ring, when we let it ring from every twin-sized bed and every futon, from every sleep sofa and every air mattress, we will be able to speed up that day when all of Clark's children, Julie and Scott, Laurel and Vanessa, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, "Free at last! Free at last! Thank Clark our Father, we are free at last!"
7 comments:
ha ha ha! Leave to you, Vanessa, to write a manifesto about bedtime! That is fantastic!
bahahahaha! i laugh my head off everytime!!!
i've heard of eating dessert first, but it looks like some of my neighbors to the south are taking things to extremes...
Love the manifesto! Love the new background colors too! Looks fantastic!
My teenage sister who is graduating from high school thinks that she may steal this and give it to my dad...
Hey Em--since I essentially stole the manifesto from 9 different speeches and documents, I think pretty much anyone should be allowed to use this manifesto for whatever they need. Tell your sister that I hope it works for her.
Lol!!
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