A childhood belief about general

When I was little, my mom and my aunt used to exaggerate when they talked about late we had stayed up, and they would always say, "We stayed up till 5 o'clock in the morning!"

I remember having a really heated argument with a girl in pre-school one day when all the kids were bragging about how late they'd stayed up. "I stayed up till 11!" "I stayed up till 1 o'clock!"

I marched proudly to the center of the circle and declared, "Oh yeah? Well I stayed up till 5--o'clock--in the morning!" I beamed and waited for the shock of the others.

Much to my disappointment, their expressions stayed the same and this girl argued, "Well I stayed up till SIX o'clock in the morning!"

I rolled my eyes. "You can't stay up later than 5 o'clock in the morning."

For some reason I had been led to believe that 5 am was the latest it could possibly get.