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I happen to find it really hard to sleep sometimes at night. Especially whenever I stay up late doing one thing or another, going to bed becomes a problem because it almost like my body now thinks that I plan on staying up all night, so it tries to do that. Well I found a way to trick myself to fall asleep and it's actually pretty effective.

Whenever I'm done with whatever it is keeping me up at night, I lay on my bed, eyes closed and just think of anything from my past and before I know it, I'm unconscious, lol. Sometimes when there's nothing to think of or when no thoughts is forthcoming, what I do is imagine some really crazy scenarios in my head and it works. I think the trick there is just making my brain run out of battery life so that I can finally have some sleep.

Well last night was one of those nights where I stayed up late and as I lay on my bed trying to sleep, the thought that came to my mind was something that happened some few years ago. You see back then, my dad would always mock me about my choice of friends because my friends were all younger than me. It wasn't like they were five years younger, no. It was mostly two years or a year difference, but dad always felt like they were too young to be my friends and anytime I came back home from playing with them, he would tell me how I'm always playing with kids not my age.

_{Photo by Robert Collins}

He probably thought that doing that would make me go become friends with some older kids. Now, it wasn't like they weren't older kids to play with, but the truth was that majority of the kids my age or slightly older than me back then were very corrupt. They even had a group and would always move around together like it's some kind of cult. I used to be really tight friends with them because they were the guys I always played football with but then when I started to notice the way some of them did some certain things, I began to give them some distance.

I still was friends with them, but I was no longer close to them. I would go play football with them every now and then (because football wasn't everyday) and after that I would leave to go be with my other friends, the one dad said were too young for me.

Now at that time, I really wasn't thinking much of what my dad was saying because he wasn't really stopping me from playing with my friends. He would just say that and then nothing else. He wasn't taking any actions to stop me from being friends with them, neither was he being rude to my friends when they come look for me at home. It was almost like he didn't really have a problem with them but would always bring up the age thing every now and then when he remembers. But he never for once said it in the presence of any of them.

One day at home, we heard some news about one of the older kids that I used to play football with. He had touched a little kid (she was around five years old at the time) in a way he shouldn't have, in a sexual way, and somehow the kid had gone and told her mom. The news spread all over the community and the guy ran away for days and didn't come back until his parents settled with the parents of the little girl.

I didn't think of it then, but as I laid on my bed trying to trick my brain into sleeping, I said to myself that when that news broke out, I should have gone to my dad and asked him if that was the kind of older kids he wanted me to be friends with. That for sure would have made him stop telling me to go be friends with some older kids.