the face of all things grown-up

Johnny Carson has gone into that good night. (Via Jeff.)

When I was a kid Johnny Carson was what being an adult meant to me. In other words: the freedom to not have to go to bed at any set time (not that I ever did, but rarely was I allowed to do whatever I wanted -- mostly I sat up late, late, late and read, read, read). On the weekends, if I begged hard enough, my parents would let me sleep over with my Granny and Papaw Summers, who lived all of a mile from our house. Granny Summers is well known for being a night owl, and still stays up until 1 or 2 every night. On Friday nights, my Papaw would sit up with us and we'd all watch Johnny Carson together. She and I would stay up for David Letterman after he went to bed. On Saturday nights we all stayed up and watched SNL at the same time. Those are good memories.

As a teenager, I had my wisdom teeth removed by an orthodontist named Dr. Goes. They gave me an IV of something really strong to kill the pain. It made me even more talkative than usual. When Dr. Goes remarked that the giant bloody holes in my gums where he'd extracted the teeth, roots swiveled in odd patterns, were closing up by themselves with no need for stitches, I yelled with delight, "That's my mutant healing factor!" He liked that so much he gave me percocet. There was a huge snow storm that trapped us in for the days of my percocet-hazed recovery. My brother and I watched science fiction movies -- Streets of Fire (his choice), Escape from New York (my choice), and Robocop one and two (desperation's control of our local video store). My constant joke was: "I'm Johnny Carson!"

(For those who don't remember, JC had a tabloid fling with percocet years after he'd retired.)