Go to sleep close your eyes and watch TV

 

Go to sleep close your eyes and watch TV




A funny but bittersweet tale from the days of wine and roses in the Creason family that has been plagued by the terrible disease of over-indulgence of booze. The patriarch led the way to the use of strong drink and some of his heirs followed suit down this destructive road . Some managed with great self-control to release the hold of John Barleycorn but not before some setbacks. In our time alcohol was offered as the solution to stress and a show of hospitality to guests. The struggle only ends in the last breaths. Sister Cheryl was in the grips of  intemperence for a few years when she lived around Southern California with four children and an absent father who moved to Colorado. She took up with unsavory characters who were amenable to this sad habit and sometimes the kids had to struggle. While they all turned out to be sterling people and upstanding citizens the drinking was hard on everybody. So this story involves a night when a small party had begun in one of her households which changed frequently in those days. The kids were in the way of the dipsomania and she sent them into their bedrooms with the admonition of "go to sleep, close your eyes and watch TV!" They children knew exactly what this confused direction meant and probably went off to sleep on their own as the drinking and smoking continued in the adult part of the house. The line is still repeated as a silly bit of parental confusion due to substance abuse and is buried now in a sorry period of waste. Cheryl went on to a life of usefulness and gentility but always regretted her falls from the wagon.

                               


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