It had been an especially long day. So, we were struggling to get the girls to sleep this evening and they were in exhausted chaos mode. Clara was blubbering something about how she didn’t want to wear short sleeved pajamas, but she also didn’t want long sleeved pajamas. There were reasons for this. Something perhaps about her possition when she falls asleep and how some kind of pajama shirt with a long sleeve on one side and a short one on the other would be optimal. I’m unclear about the details, because by this point I was equally exhausted and was tempted to just shove her screaming body head first into a pillow case and then tie it off for the night.

Instead, I forced a set of pajamas onto her, and then waited a few seconds until she stopped screaming bullets, and started reloading her lungs for the next barrage. Then I caught her gaze and appealed to reason. I explained quickly that it wasn’t fair that daddy wasn’t allowed to go to sleep, because I had to wake up so much sooner than she and everyone else. She suddenly stopped crying as she pondered this concept. She wiped a tear with the back of her hand and stared into the distance for a moment. Then she seemed to come to a conclusion.

“I think it is sad that you have to wake up so much sooner than we do.” She began, “I wish you didn’t have a phone with an alarm that wakes you up all time. Then you could just sleep as long as you wanted.”

I smiled and tucked the blankets in around her chin. “You really live in a fantastic dream world of science and mystery.” I told her. “Perhaps someday, if mankind works hard and believes in the vision of a better world, your children will exist in a future where phones do not have alarms that wake people up in the morning. Where people can sleep as long as they wish without having to go to work in the mornings. Perhaps we should have pursued alarm clockless phones before we ever built cordless ones. We were fools not to reach higher while the world was still fresh. But for now we must live in the dusty neanderthal cave world of obnoxious cellular reminders of responsibility and employment. I will suffer through this broken alarm clock haunted world while the engineers at Apple and Samsung battle for dominance in the highly marketable jingle-jangleless smart phone market. Someday humanity will overcome, and in the brightest of afternoons we shall rise in unison, every man to his new day, refreshed and enlightened and completely jobless and only then shall we truly know what it means to be free.”

She didn’t respond. She was already sleeping. No doubt already dreaming of this perfect world.