Watching history being made ruins my sleep

History in the making has ruined my sleep. It began weeks ago when the Chicago Cubs hit, ran and stole their way into the play-offs and then the World Series. Night after night my in-house coach monopolized the lounge chair and television.
Hovering around to offer him comfort food when his team failed, I quickly learned the historical significance of these games. Sometimes I sat down to watch. Hope surged early in the final game when Chicago Cubs took the lead. Then the Cubs changed pitchers and the score jumped to 6-6. I wanted to see the end, however, my early bird schedule demanded that I get sleep rather than stay awake to see the end of the game. In the wee hours of the morning, the night owl burst into the bedroom, “They won! In the tenth inning they won!”
I rubbed my eyes, sleepily rejoiced that the 108 years curse had ended, and drifted back to sleep. History had been made. I thought we would return to our regularly scheduled bedtime.
I thought wrong. I had forgotten the presidential election between the first woman candidate and a billionaire. I had voted early and expected to enjoy a guaranteed period of no more discussion or deciding. Even with early voting underway, day after day of breaking news repeatedly reminded all voters that in this age of media and perpetual recordings, everything we say and do is captured electronically and preserved for recall at any time. Revelations of their lifestyles and personal choices in language, email and twitter should have sufficed for the history books. It didn’t.
The polls went up and down. The talking heads predicted an obvious outcome, re-configured their predictions and hinted that they could be wrong if voters in this or that state saw things differently.
On election night, the lounge chair coach held the remote in a death grip and channel surfed between liberal, conservative and rarely unbiased coverage of the election results. Like a great baseball game, the announcers called out the hits, misses and low balls.
I had a meeting to attend about the time the first red and blue lights appeared on the electronic maps. I returned home to talking heads earnestly discussing the surprising display of red.
I took care of routine chores. The master of the remote control surfed to hear every announcer say, “It’s too close to call.”
Eventually, a few state tallies settled into patterns for an obvious winner and the news spread, “We have a final prediction for West Virginia, for Delaware …”
Florida’s tallies bounced between the two contestants. Michigan, Wisconsin and New Hampshire stubbornly remained as inconclusive as a hanging chad.
It was a night of surprises. The red states crept up in number, piling up in favor of the businessman with no political experience. The blue team slumped in schocked dismay and sorrow. The red team caught their breath in awe as what many had said could not happen actually did.
They watched. I couldn’t. Sleep called while both colors still retained the hope of collecting enough votes to hit a home run to the White House.
While I slept, it became obvious that the originally projected winner could not win. The anticipated, easy win for the blue team did not happen. My personal announcer woke me up at 2 a.m. announcing that the billionaire had won.
We both slept-in the next day. After a night of surprises we needed the rest.
Next time when history is about to be made, let’s try to get it done before bedtime, okay?