Undercover

When the sun goes down, that is when we get our second wind.

"We" are the night people. We sleep late. We work late. We check our mailboxes at 1 in the morning. We eat breakfast about 11 a.m. We stop at the 24-hour market after work for snacks, or deodorant, or cat food. We are the people who stop to refuel our cars in "the middle of the night," which, by the way, for us is about 5 a.m.

That's when some of you get up for work during your "normal" hours. As a "normal" (but I beg to differ) woman once told me, our kind of people must miss out on all the "fun times." Yeah, lady, I never have any fun at all. (And this conversation took place on a ski lift at about noon on a Tuesday. Not having fun? Bollocks!)

Fun for me happens all the time. It is going to the grocery store at midnight, picking what I require off the shelves and coasting through the almost-empty aisles, occasionally passing one of my fellow "night people." It is making a dentist appointment and not having to take half a vacation day. It is cruising through the mall at 1 p.m. and not having to fight the regular weekend crowds, which I am sure you are a part of. It is never having to hit rush-hour traffic. It is being able to accept that invitation for a beer late at night and not worry whether I can make it to work the next day.

It's freedom.

Don't wrinkle your nose when you hear what time we go to sleep. Don't wrinkle your nose when you hear what time we actually got out of bed. And, most importantly, don't call us before 10 a.m. We love our lives. We love our hours. So get used to it; it is not about to change.

And the best part is, we don't need alarm clocks.