When evening becomes morning

Working 11 - 7 means that I am awake when today becomes tomorrow for everyone else.

It was hard at first to know when to say "Good Morning" instead of "Good Evening."

Here is what I have learned. Drunks do not like to hear "good morning." One of the things one wants to forget while drinking is that there is a tomorrow. Why kill a good buzz?

The first person to let me know this was not even drunk, she was just getting off work at some bar and was coming in for her small expensive tub of ice cream.

I know say "Good Evening" to her every time she comes in.

But the two newspaper delivery people bring the morning sometime between 3 and 4. Before 3 we have drunks and people working late shifts getting off work. After 4, we get our first early morning risers. There is a navy officer who drives 100 miles each morning and night. There is the old, embittered-acting mechanic who is really just looking for a reaction of some kind.

Now I ask when they come in between 3 and 4 and sometimes I get a look from someone pulling an all nighter like I wish it was morning and I had some sleep and this project was over. Other times, it is just someone going from one job to the other and days mean nothing. They have two jobs and the sun just happens to move in the sky. Sometimes they notice, mostly they work and rarely sleep.

I like the night. The whole night and its shift to morning. Every morning I help engineers and Mexican day laborers with their morning rituals. I end some nights for others. And then I get to go home. To sleep myself and miss the day I helped usher in for so many.