Midnight is long gone.
Maybe you’re crowded around a kitchen table pasting construction paper onto poster board, squirreled into sleeping bags on a cold basement floor, or drinking cold coffee and leaning over laptops before tomorrow’s big deadline.
Either way, it’s time to face facts: you’re up way too late.
Your eyes burn a bit, your head spaces out, random arms or legs starts throbbing, and maybe your scalp gets really, really, really, really itchy. Point is, you’ve ignored your body’s Go to Sleep signals for hours so now you’re hunched over a walking stick squinting deep into the foggy darkness of four, five, six in the morning.
The good news is your brain has developed just the system to charge you up with extra juice and help you power through. Yes, we’re talking about massively lowered Standards of Hilarity which help make everything funny. Someone steps on Styrofoam Jupiter, kicks a can of Coke onto the pizza, or accidentally deletes the Powerpoint slides, and suddenly everyone looks up at each other with tired raccoon eyes and… just starts cracking up.
Late night laughing is a beautiful moment because we’re letting ourselves stand up and step back from whatever’s keeping us up. Gone are the stresses of the group project, hanging dread of the deadline, and tensions tying us together. Now the differences dissolve and we realize we’re all part of the same Bleary Eyed Giggling clan — telling bad jokes, laughing till it hurts, and smiling till sunrise.
AWESOME!
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This is the story of my life. And you’ve written it, Neil.
AWESOME.
Ditto. Thanks, Neil.
One of my personal favorites :D
Win.
This just happened to me tonight! HAHAHA!!!!!!!!!!!! ;-) So incredibly
AWESOME!
Awesome!
I try and be quiet and I keep the lights on so I can see what I’m doing and where I’m going when I’m up late. But it’s like there’s a tendency to walk into things and drop stuff around when it’s past your bed time. And I don’t know why, but it’s hilarious!
Great.
great!
I’m actually experiencing this right now! My cousins and i are watching Invictus and we’re beyond bored and we just keep talking throughout the whole thing, laughing at the dumbest things!
hahahahah
i just did that yesterday, slept at 4 am :)
WOOO!
Book of Awesome in Australia!
Freakin’ wonderful stuff. :)
Soooo true!
I was waiting for this one…
Late at night during a particular game of Catchphrase (kind of like a game of talking charades, if you aren’t familiar) one of the funniest things I have ever seen took place. With only a few seconds left, my friend Kyle got his word. His only clue was to yell “OLD PEOPLE” and make a noise like a tiny dinosaur.
Without missing a beat another friend leaned forward and somehow guessed the correct answer: Senile.
We laughed for about an hour after that one. We laughed pst the point of crying and hurting. By the end of everything, we felt absolutely miserable and exnhausted…but it was so worth it.
I have a similar charades-like game story. My friends and I were playing on teams and the other team was about to lose as they couldn’t get their last word.
With less than ten seconds they somehow managed to jump from “killing people?” to “…excercising?” to “Jenny Craig?” to the answer – “THIGH MASTER”
It was worth losing just to watch that thought process happen.
I LOVE Catchphrase! Clues/guesses like that are the best. After after-prom my senior year, several of us were hanging out in my basement, playing Catchphrase. One of my friends was ALWAYS doing something random with the stuff in our basement, and this night he happened to be wearing a lifejacket … just because. Anyway, one of us got “lifejacket” as a word, and the clue ended up being, “Gary’s wearing one!” In the wee small hours of the morning, it was particularly hysterical.
This is our favorite too! The best is when you just mind meld with someone else, and you can use one out of the blue word or gesture and they know exactly what you mean. Then you’re laughing and high-fiving while everyone else stares…Too funny!
My best memory of this is back in high school. I was at my bff’s house and we stayed up just way too late. We started doing Mad Libs and everything we said was funny. Then we went through some old pictures of her and came across this one of her when she was little where her face was just a perfect circle….. we lost it. We still joke about her perfectly round face.
Love this. Why is sleep deprivation also a little like drinking too much? I should tell my students that if they want to have a good time, just don’t sleep. It’s funnier than getting underage drinking citations, right?
I work nights and this usually happens around 4 am. I love laughing until it hurts!
I love this, because it’s your body’s natural way of keeping you holding on when you just HAVE to keep fighting sleep.
Wow! Last night I did the same thing, even though I don’t normally stay up late. I usually try to stay quiet, in fear my mom will walk in and ask why I’m not sleeping yet. But last night, I let a giggle out and the giggling continued in short bursts. It was great. :)
This is what always happens when our relatives get together and we play Scrabble way too long :P
Yes. YES! I saw this title and started laughing already because of the wonderful experiences I’ve had with that. So much joy. So much.
Haha! Epic! :)
I love that! It’s so hilarious! The sad part is when you try to explain to other people how much fun you had, and they just don’t get why were you laughing at so stupid things! And you don’t even know why it was so funny, you just know that it felt hilarious at the time.
I’m old so midnight is late. And last night we had a game night that lasted just past midnight and we were laughing hysterically!
Hahaha! I have to say that this pretty much made my day! Thanks for thinking of making this blog! It is far out the best one! Awesome:D
Being in a giggly mood in general is just so fun. And the funny looks others shoot at you when you’re in a giggle fit just make them all the better. Good post :)
I have to agree with this one. This is why I refuse to go to bed before 2 AM, even on nights when I have to work the next day (high school teaching).
Everything is better and funnier after midnight, including me. My friends and family don’t appreciate me calling them so late, but my insights and comments are hilarious, even if what I consider to be “late night intellectual contributions,” they consider to be “drunk-dials.”
I started laughing by just reading this, and it’s not even midnight yet. Thank you so much, Neil. :)
So here’s the thing….I think you’re awesome Neil!
Well, gotta go, it’s getting late!! ;))
Great job!!
This happens to me even when I’m alone. The other night I was up past 3am and saw, for the 1st time, the “Shake Weight for Men” infomercial. I. Could. Not. Breathe.
OMG. Shake Weight. Have you seen the SNL skit?
this ALWAYS happens to me too! I’ll be watching something late and cracking up, and then I’ll show it to a friend the next day and the’re like, “Ummm why are you showing me this?”
You’re a brilliant writer and a symbol of “dreams do come true.” I’m writing, which is my dream come true, and posting a story now online at http://www.afacebookstory-oneclickaway.blogspot.com. I hope you will take a peek.
Wishes for continued success and days of awesomeness to you!!
This is one of my favorites! (Ok, please don’t hold it against me for the amount of times I have said or will say that … it’s your fault for writing so well and for thinking of such great things …)
I love it when that happens (:
Late night, delirious laughter is the best (:
I love staying up late until everything becomes funny. It’s INFINITELY better when you can sleep in as late as you want the next day.
That is AWESOME x 1000
– Justice Bird
This is my favorite awesome thing ever! #1 on my list!
We call these the “sleepy hahas” in my house! It really is awesome, and the laughs keep coming when you talk about them the next day!
It is incredibly awesome! But lately absolutely cracking up at the most ridiculous things in lectures, eg finding that trademe.co.nz has mc hammer pants…. in relation to looking for geology hammers.
Oh and a note for the NZ release Borders Wellington won’t have it for a while yet :'(
Ha ha, I am now picturing geologists in the field, wearing mc hammer pants! Awesome!
I think I am at that point right now actually cuz this entire thing was very hilarious to me. I laughed the entire way through…….Awesome ;)
I LOVE this list. It is the most amazing, most relevant list to my life ever, and each and every one makes me smile reading it.
This has to be my favourite one on the entire list. I laughed when I saw the title. That period of time is truly awesome.
Can so relate. Just happened long weekend and there was realisation of mucho mirth and up way, way too late. There is a special zone of hilarity when one is up way past bedtime. Thanks for post.
Happened to my sister and me on the day this came out! We were looking at an atlas and couldn’t stop laughing at the name “West Hamfordshire” :D
this happened definitely happened to me and my best friends this long weekend. we were just lying in bed and coming up with (what we thought were) the most hilarious jokes. we wouldn’t stop laughing over the stupidest things even though our eyes are half-closed. love it!
Who says it has to be late at night? This can happen ANYTIME one is exhausted anytime of day. I’ve had my moments where the dumbest little thing set me off laughing non stop. Particularly during those tired teen years. No I wasn’t high, I’ve never done drugs and crap.
Yesterday in the afternoon my 4 year old was getting particularly giddy, rowdy and mischievous giggling the whole time he was causing trouble. Then after I had to discipline him, he crashed on the couch and passed out asleep. I guess he was wired and tired.
I always have that feeling when I am up too late… It is sooo funny! Especially when you are with others… friends, cousins, relatives etc!! but when I am with my friends we always can’t stop laughing not just at midnight! :D
It’s pretty much just funny to have a giggle-fit where everything is funny at any time. Like today, when I dropped my waterbottle and it started rolling down a hill – my friend thought I was crazy for not just getting it, but I was laughing too hard.
And there was a girl in one of my classes who SNORTED when she laughed. And not small snorts either – loud, honking ones which she tried to supress (because she knew the result) making it funnier. So basically, her laughing just once would set off the entire class for about 10 minutes.
Haha I LOVE it when this happens.
AWESOME!
This is so true, I had done this a lot of times!
I can’t agree enough with how AWESOME this post is!! So many of my nights in college were like this…we’d laugh at the silliest things, and we’d laugh FOREVER! And everyone knows that laughter is extremely contagious, especially when shared among close friends. I LOVE THIS. :D
This brought back such great memories of me and the twin laughing our butts of for no good reason late at night. We used to get in so much trouble! Ah… good times. ;-)