<h3>By Lee Scott</h3>
The world is full of two types of people. The early birds and the night owls. Those that love getting up early in the morning to start their day. And those that like to wake up late and stretch the day out as long as possible. I am an early bird. I love sitting with a cup of coffee in the dark and waiting for the right moment to snap a picture of the sun as it comes up. It is the quiet part of the day when the world is slowly waking up.

The night owls love the closing of the day as the sun sets. For them, taking a shower at 8:00 p.m. means you are getting ready for a night out. Night owls like to eat dinner late and spend hours sitting around the table chatting. On the other hand, early birds are taking their showers at 8:00 p.m. just like the night owls, but they are doing it in order to get to bed by 9:00.

I know quite well the difference between early birds and night owls. I grew up in a house of night owls. As the lone early bird, I would walk through the house down to the kitchen and savor the silence of the house. As one of eight children, the silence was so rare that you had to grab it whenever available.

On Sunday mornings, I would go to church at the 9:00 a.m. service with my father (so he could go play golf afterwards) while the rest of my siblings waited for the 12:15 service with my mother. I would be sitting there reading the Sunday comics as siblings wandered out of the bedrooms in pajamas.

It is a joy to be married to someone who is also an early bird. We wake in the mornings without alarms. We take early flights out of airports and leave the house at dawn when we take road trips. We applaud ourselves on those rare days when we actually stay up till 11:00 p.m. “We are adults” we say to one another as if finally getting permission to stay up past our bedtimes.

There is nothing wrong with early birds or night owls. Both groups have their own circadian rhythm. But for our visiting friends and family, we remind them that the coffee pot comes on at 5:30 a.m. and our lights go out at nine. Welcome to Beaufort!