Withering Glance: Bedtime stories

Rick Nelson and Claude Peck dispense unasked-for advice about clothing, etiquette, culture, relationships, grooming and more.

CP: You know the old hypothetical quiz game: Could you form an LTR with someone who is your opposite in terms of smoking, politics, religion, fashion, taste in movies?

RN: I'm going to follow the my-way-or-the-highway example of our hyper-partisan political system and say "Heck, no."

CP: What about a difference in preferred bedtime?

RN: I beg your pardon?

CP: You know, you're crazy about the person, but he or she conks out for the night halfway through "The Good Wife," while you are as nocturnal as a wombat.

RN: On paper, the bedtime issue sounds like nothing. But in reality, and I'm speaking from firsthand experience here, it makes the Great Compromise of 1787 look a debate club exercise.

RN: Not that poor Mrs. Peck had any other reason to view your teenage behavior with suspicion. Now that this late-nighter has been in my mixed marriage -- early-riser-meets-after-midnighter -- for 11 years, I find myself ducking out of parties by the time Sven Sundgaard is talking dew points. The things we do for love, right?

CP: That's so sweet. My younger sister, meanwhile, keeps the hours of a Franciscan nun. Her morning workout ends at 6:15 a.m.

RN: Remind me to hate her. Who does that? Oh, wait, my otherwise perfect hubby, that's who. My favorite days of the week are Saturday and Sunday, when the tornado siren-like alarm doesn't blare at 3:45 a.m., a time I naturally consider to be The Middle of The Night.

CP: My problem is that I like staying up late and rising early. Maybe I'm part shark.

RN: Um, maybe?

RN: I wouldn't be surprised if you told me that you were mainlining those Americanos you love/need so much.

CP: When I was in high school, waking up before noon seemed perfectly ridiculous.

RN: I know. I'm surprised I graduated, since I dozed through the first three or four periods of my entire junior and senior years.

CP: Now, I can't sleep in, even after a scintillating late-night dominoes tourney. You know me, I hate missing anything.

RN: No one thought to tell me that I'd sleep less as I grew older. The prospect of retirement is beginning to terrify me, because by the time it rolls around I'll be living on three hours of shuteye a night. Oh, my gosh. I'll be my dad.