For most of us, there is an almost religious adherance to getting “the right amount of sleep” and we all know exactly how much that is. What each of us considers to be the right amount can vary widely, of course, but for most, no matter how much sleep we feel is right for us, according to surveys, just like everything else in life, besides calories, we aren't getting enough.
Sleep stats indicate the majority of society stagger from day to day suffering from Sleep Deprvation Psychosis or SDP. (Not to be confused with the engine oil additive). You can pick out the SDP sufferers as they are the ones biting off the heads of their co-workers while breaking into tears at the slightest criticism. (“You wore THOSE steel-toes with that plaid jacket, Buck?” “Waaaah!”)
Those afflicted with SDP are so short on shut-eye, they drop off at inopportune times, such as at work, when driving and while smooching with the spouse.The latter is the most serious, being cause for justifiable homicide. Getting a female judge is the ticket to “old sparky”..
Our lives are throttle-wide-open fast and stealing from our sleep time is the only way to get more hours from a day. Unfortunately, those hours come at a cost. Lack of sleep leads to such horrible, debilitrating illnesses as headache and, worse, “sleepy-tummy”; the latter, a disease where you don't so much feel crampy or nauseous, but just a little... icky. Add to that the epidemic levels of the aforementioned SDP that make both swine and bird flu fans envious, and it is easy to see our sleep gap is wider than the gap between the teeth on a smile at a Willie Nelson concert.
Still, not everyone is sold on the value of sleep. One of the most famous anti-sleep crusaders in history was Thomas Alva Edison;, inventor, innovator and brainiac. This poor guy was so driven to be productive, when he was tired, he would sit in a chair with a pencil in his fingers over a pie plate. When he would fall asleep, the pencil would slip from his grasp and clatter onto the pan, waking him up. That was all the sleep he afforded himself before getting back to work. An amazing man, truly, mind you, I bet he was a Productivity Nazi as a boss.
Although there is nobody in my large, extended family I know of that is as hard core as Edison, (all their pie plates actually have pie in them) we still have quite a variety of sleep-types contained therein.
Take my siblings... please. (Ha! Sorry, Henny!) Obviously products of the same genetic material and upbringing, more or less, they still have sleeping habits of a variety wider than Julia Roberts freakish mouth.
My brother, Bob, for example, is ex-military. Very punctual. Despite his love of camping in the great outdoors, (he makes that guy in Man vs Wild look like a city slicker) he is ruled relentlessly by the clock. No matter what he is doing, no matter how much fun he is having, he makes sure that at precisely ten o'clock, or “2200 hours” as he would call it, he is in bed. He then reads until 10:29 and then puts his book down, sets his alarm and I'm sure, hears an order (“Company...Commense SLEEP!) and obeys instantly. He is generally, and probably majorly and corporally, out by 10:31 to rise again at “Oh six hundred” exactly.
His routine is the ideal, according to sleep experts as his wake/sleep cycle is as regular as an Ex-Lax addict.
My sister, Kathy, however, is different from Bob in so many ways. She is thin. Learned, too; she is a doctor of neuro something-or-other and has all these letters after her name. The letters are abbreviations of Greek phrases that can be translated as “Way smarter than you.”, “Makes more money than you”, etc. In order to achieve what she has, however, she had to develop a sleep routine that involved her only getting four or five hours of sleep per night. Going to bed at 10:00 but getting up at two or three, was her strategy for getting ahead in the dog-eat-dog world of whatever it is she does. The more sleep-minded among my other siblings viewed her as the black sheep of the family.
Myself, I love to stay up late. It's a hold-over from when the kids were young and the only time I had for myself was late at night when the family were all safe in their beds and I could relax. I appreciate every day I have on the planet and have a hard time letting go of each one. I do not go gentle into that short good night. I love to sleep in, however, and like nothing better than the occasional ten hour sleep marathon on a weekend augmented by a nap mid-afternoon.. That is a rarity, however, because, although I enjoy sleeping, as long as I get my seven hours, I'm good to go. In fact, extra sleep makes me tired and groggy. Like I am now. Hmmm... Now I am wondering whether I didn't get enough sleep or too much? Cupcake thinks it was the beer and tequila.... hmmmm....
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