Some people really like to sleep. They think of sleep as if it were their hobby, always looking forward to the weekend when they can sleep all the way to lunch, even beyond. They take pride in the amount of time they spend between covers in their own dreamy land.
Then, other people try to sleep as little as possible. Some super-CEOs – and other dictators – sleep only four hours a night, and micromanage and create master plans for world domination for the next twenty.
And then there are those who don’t really like to sleep, but can’t help falling asleep. I once fell asleep on a chair in a jewelry store, while waiting for the man to replace the battery in my watch. That takes, what, all of three minutes?
I often fall asleep at the movies. I even fall sleep when I’m telling a bedtime story to my kids. They don’t, but I do.
As a kid, I’d get up early – on the weekends, of course – and do stuff before my parents got up. I’d be up, reading, well, mostly reading, but also doing something.
These days, I may get to 8.30 on the weekends, but I take the lost time back at night. These days, my time is the time when everybody else has gone to bed, and I’m up alone, writing, and surfing, and fiddling around with my websites.
For some reason, I can’t sleep past 10 am. Even if went to bed at 9.30 am, I’d be up by ten, and it’s not because I’m an old boxer, because I’m not. But, somehow, my brain just sends my body signals that it’s time to get up and go out, and not waste a perfectly good day sleeping.
Because that’s what sleep is to me: a waste of time.
Now, the problem is that sometimes my body protests, and simply ignores the brain. That’s what the electronics industry calls “a snooze button.” So, I may not like sleeping in, or sleeping long, but when I sleep, I do sleep – and nothing, not wild horses, nor wild kids, can wake me up.
Because I know this, I’m always nervous going to bed on the road. I know there’s a plane to catch, or a taxi to grab, or a meeting to attend, and I know that if I happen to be in the sleep mode – and the important event is early in the morning, I may just miss it.
So I toss and turn. And I wake up to every sound. And then the sound of silence. Why is it so quiet? Oh, I know, it’s so silent because I got the room with the soundproof walls and windows, and outside the world is running amok already, but I can’t hear it. Now that’s just silly, I say to myself. And then I get up to check. And I go back to bed, checking the time. 3.20, still have a good four hours to sleep.
3:50. It’s hot in here.
4:30. What time is it? Am I late already? Man, I knew it! No? Phew, great.
5:10. Oh, has it been only 40 minutes? I am going to be so tired in the morning. I have to sleep!
5:50. Why do I keep waking up every 40 minutes?
6:45. Rrrrrrring. What’s that? Snooze? Absolutely snooze.
6:50. Rrrrrrrrring! Ooooooh. I can’t get up. OK, forget the morning run/breakfast, I’ll sleep another 20 minutes instead.
7:05: What time is it? Am I late already? Man, I knew it! No? Phew, great.
I somehow manage to drag myself out of the bed, and 99 percent of times I have no problem making the plane, or the meeting.
But of course, my French is so bad is because the classes were always at 8.30 in the morning, and then I had nothing else until lunch. I managed to talk myself out of attending class (but I should have done it in French).
And then there’s the one percent that haunts me.
As a student, I would take the train back to my parents, and because I hated wasting time, I often traveled on the night train. That way, I would “just sleep”, and would be ready to roll the minute the train arrived. What was a five-hour trip during the day was an eight-hour trip during the night, but that was fine.
I would just sleep anyway, so no harm done.
I’d buy a magazine or have a book with me, read a while, and wait for the conductor, maybe chat with the other person in the same cabin, then turn the lights out after the conductor’s visit. There were three bunks in each little cabin, and I always tried to get the one on top. Not sure why, but I did. OK, it was because I didn’t want to see other people climbing right in front of me, that’s why.
And then I’d sleep. And I’d sleep well. The sound of the train – clonk, clonk, clonk – was like a lullaby to me. I’ve always been able to sleep in the car, on airplanes, and trains.
In the morning, the conductor would knock on the door, yell “good morning!” and close the door. And the person in the bunks below me would start their dance, trying to get dressed and brush their teeth and not touch each other, in the space of two square meters. With any luck, I’d be alone in the cabin and could take it easy,
This time, though, I woke up to the train conductor shaking me.
“Wake up, buddy,” he said, as I turned and looked at him, squinting, trying to fathom where I was.
“It’s OK, but you have to get up now, kid,” he then added, and I could see his big smile.
“There you are,” said my father.
It was a little odd to see him, he would usually wait in the car outside, not get on the train. Now, apparently, he had sat in the car when the train had arrived but had got out and about when he hadn’t seen me anywhere – and that had been an hour and a half ago.
He had then asked around, and they had told him that the train was empty. My father, probably worried, had insisted on going back to check, because I had called home the night before and told them that I’d be on the night train. (Obviously, this happened in the pre-cell phone era).
They had pulled the train cars away from the main station, a good 400 meters, to wait until it was time for the night train to go back.
That’s where the conductor and my father found me, all curled up against the wall, in the top bunk. Sleeping like a baby.
Well, a wild baby. While I’ve never been a sleepwalker, I do toss and turn, and move around. And when I have kicked the duvet out of the bed, and have to retrieve it, or when I just want to get to the other side of the bed, in my mind’s eye, I see myself doing a full 360 around my vertical axis. Wife tells me it’s not as much a full 360-degree spin as it is three bounces at a breakneck speed. And according to her, “breakneck” is the perfect description for the move.
The zone between being awake and being asleep is a fascinating, even a scary one. The brain bends all boundaries, but the body is perfectly capable of performing the tasks the brain tells it to do.
For the first year in college, I had a roommate. Just a guy, a nice guy, but a complete stranger, living with me in the 19-square meter apartment. When we both had our beds and desks on each side of the room, what was left was a one-meter wide corridor from the front door, between our beds, to our desks.
Also, the first year was the most school-like, partly because I made it that way by going to the classes every day, and partly because the first year was the same for everybody.
So, my roommate and I would often get out the door, get on the same tram or subway, and ride to the university together.
But that just happened. There was no agreement, it just happened each morning.
“You taking off now? Yeah, me, too.”
So, each man was to take care of himself. And get up when he wanted to. And use any method he seemed fit or necessary to get up in time.
The apartment was so small that the little space between the beds was mostly used for simply walking out, of maybe backing up to make space for the other person on his way out, or to the bathroom. There was no space for a night table, so I kept my clock radio under my bed.
About two weeks into the first term my alarm clock went off. I snoozed. Five minutes later, there was another song blasting from under my bed. I slammed the top of the clock radio with my hand. Snooze.
Five minutes later: “I’m gonna take you by surpriiiiiiise, and make you realiiiiiiize, Amaaaanda”.
I knew it was time to get up, and turn off the alarm. To snooze, you could just press a button on top of the radio. To turn it off completely, you needed to flick a switch on the side of the radio.
My brain knew this. My left arm protested, and wouldn’t move. I picked up the clock radio with my right hand, while half of my body was hanging outside the bed. I held the clock radio in my hand, but couldn’t turn the alarm off because my left arm was still asleep.
“I’m gonna tell you right awaaaaaay, I cant wait another daaaaaaay, Amaaaaaanda”.
And I did what any reasonable man would do. I tried to turn the alarm off with my teeth.
Just as I had the side of the radio in my mouth, and just as I found the switch so I could turn it off, I also managed to open my eyes, and I could see my new roommate lying in his bed, fully clothed, with an economics book in his hand, staring at me.
I put the clock radio back on the floor, and pushed it under my bed again.
“You taking off now?” I asked my roommate. “Yeah, me, too.”
"I’m always nervous going to bed on the road. I know there’s a plane to catch, or a taxi to grab, or a meeting to attend, and I know that if I happen to be in the sleep mode – and the important event is early in the morning, I may just miss it.
So I toss and turn. And I wake up to every sound. And then the sound of silence. Why is it so quiet? Oh, I know, it’s so silent because I got the room with the soundproof walls and windows, and outside the world is running amok already, but I can’t hear it. Now that’s just silly, I say to myself. And then I get up to check."
You and me both, brother. Liked the train story also …