on sleep

Isn’t sleep weird?

I’ve been doing a lot of pondering about sleep since, well, always. I love sleep. Sleep loves me. Or so I’d like to believe. In reality, though, as long as I get about seven hours of sleep, getting more doesn’t make me feel any different. In fact, on the incredibly rare occasions that I get more than nine hours of sleep, I feel worse. Like I’ve been sledgehammered by tiny gnomes. Taking a break from stealing underpants, I guess. (probably the most recent South Park episode I’ve seen) Even I am willing to admit that no one really needs more than nine hours of sleep a night. Well, no adult. And my little girl has determined that she usually doesn’t, either, much to my chagrin.

Matt and I have radically different attitudes about sleep. I see sleep as an investment in your waking hours. I need a certain amount – at least, most nights – to feel ‘with it’ during the day. Otherwise, I’m some level of miserable. Coffee helps, but at some point, you JUST NEED SLEEP. This figures largely into why the first year of Lizzy’s life was not a great time for me. As you know, there were other factors, but sleep was a biggie.

Matt seems to perceive sleep as somewhat a waste of time. I try not to nag him about stuff – really, honestly, I do(n’t?); not that he’s any more ‘in need’ of nagging than anyone else – but, well, when someone I live with has a different perspective on things I deem important, it’s hard to keep my mouth shut. So I try to talk him into getting more sleep, appealing to concerns about his health, etc. He likes to have some wind-down time at night – time to pluck the ol’ guitar strings (not a euphemism, by the way), or flip around our very basic cable channels, or … well, that’s about all I’ve ever seen him do. I like to put Lizzy to bed (which he does sometimes, too), then probably crash myself because it’s after 10 p.m. when that little dervish finally drops off. Thus netting me exactly eight hours of sleep.

As I recall, my dad used to share Matt’s reluctance to hit hay. Perhaps he still does; I’m not sure. Mom and Dad would stay up past midnight, and Dad would get up at 6 or so to charge off to work. (the charge started slowly sometimes, I hear.) And Dad, like Matt, was none too fond of separating self from mattress on Saturday mornings.

It's almost as if they're saying, "We're going to suck the marrow out of life." Whereas I'm saying, "I'll do that marrow-sucking thing when I'm fully rested, and I'll be feeling good and ready for it!"

The first summer that I had the Willow Drive job, when I had to get up at 4 a.m., I remember whining to my parents at 8:30 p.m. the night before my first shift that I had to go to bed, but I didn’t want to. (Yes, I was 17 or 18 years old.) Dad gave me this look of disdaing tinged with mockery, and said, “You don’t NEED eight hours of sleep a night! You don’t ever need more than six.” (that’s how I remember it, Dad. You can deny it all you want.) I remember being horrified at the very thought!

College, of course, knocked this attitude right out of me. One time, I stayed up all night twice in a row because it was finals week, plus I wanted to go out and play darts, but needed to get some revisions done afterward. That was not so bright. But, hey. It was college.

Why am I rambling about sleep? This week’s Scene magazine feedback question, which I’m currently compiling, asks the servicemembers overseas the following:

“Are you a morning person, or a night owl?”

Since it is military folk being polled, most respond that they’re morning people. Because, as one ex-military friend of mine said (Hi, Jay!): "It's true that we get more done before 9 a.m. than most people do all day. But what they don't tell you is, we don't get much else done for the rest of the day!" Except coffee breaks, as I recall. Coffee breaks seemed to be key.

One notable exception among the stock 'morning person' responses was this young man, who replies:

“I'm a night person. I sleep about 3 hours a day, and I'm good with
that.”

What planet are you FROM, dude? How is that possible?

(I hope that this man never meets Matt. Or my dad.)