You can’t hope toward heavy eyes or rhythmic breathing. It takes you when reality ceases to have control. Sometimes, it doesn’t take you until you’re actually ready to submit.

Thankfully, vampirism runs in the family. I don’t seem to be the only one infected in the Waterhouse clan.

Tom is the hardest working person I’ve ever known. He’s also my dad. He sleeps sparingly between shifts behind the wheel of a really big truck — the kind of super reinforced steel juggernaut that can run you off the road with nary a wisp of thought. He expertly pilots a 10-wheel diesel beast commonly reserved for men with stoic nerves and a healthy distaste for those with a fleeting sense of highway ownership.

My mom, Annette, also found it rare to sleep in between PTA meetings, various Team Mom chores and raising increasingly unruly children. Apparently she bunks on somewhere near four hours a night. Which to me is an unfathomable crime seeing as how I get nearly six hours and feel like people should kiss my feet for the good and Holy Sacrifice I make for all the other schmucks that get 10-plus hours a night.

I suppose my lack of sleepy time started with predictable age-appropriate rebelliousness. A small part of me liked that I was awake when no one else was.

I’ve always loved the idea of walking around while the rest of the world tossed and turned their way through hours of pillowed inactivity.

It was my form of independent expression enhanced by escaping the house and roaming the neighborhood when everyone else had given up on their day.

Parents usually get arrested for allowing their children to nocturnally roam wild, but back then it was just kids being kids. But I was fortunate. As long as I was home by the time my Dad woke up for work, I was off the hook.

Accepting the status quo was always a bitter pill to swallow. The words “average” and “expectation” always felt like compliance to me. I hated it. The more I fought the idea of it, the more my lack of sleep made sense.

I guess I just found it difficult to close my eyes and accept inevitability.

So the next time you find yourself flipping through the channels on another night of boorish 3 a.m. infomercials about stiffy pills, seize the opportunity to walk around the neighborhood. Explore the other side of life that only reveals itself during the hours of mischief.

Fighting the good fight against droopy eyes and the early morning light is just another day in the life. Insomnia can be a gift sometimes. You just have to know how to look at it.

Who knows, you might find a little of the vampire in you too.