Throwback Thursday from April 2016 – “I’ll Need To Sleep On It”
Throwback Thursday from April 2016 – “I’ll Need To Sleep On It”
SLEEP – I’M IN FAVOR OF IT. I’ve had years of practice doing it. I can do almost anyplace.
Whenever I sleep witnesses have sworn that I do it with my eyes closed. Not everyone does it that way. I know someone who sleeps with their eyes wide open. Talk about Spooky. This person was not a sleepwalker with his eyes open. Nope, this fellow could be in bed, tucked in, snoring like a locomotive, with his eyes open. I’m sure there is a scientific explanation as to how and why he does that. My five cent answer is that he was possessed by demons that never sleep and stay up all night watching infomercials. Yup, spooky.
When people are born they are like koala bears. They can sleep 22 hours a day. Then people grow up and appear to function without any sleep at all. Why do you think bars stay open until 2:30 AM?
There was a decade or so when I would be out in clubs until closing and the audience survivors stumbled out. After those late shows there was still too much adrenaline pumping to go home and hit the hay. So, a bunch of us would adjourn to the nearest All-Nite eatery. A burger and fries at 4 AM acted like a sedative. Only then could I hurry home, jump in bed and be up and at my “day job” by 8 AM. Do that for ten years or so and your body and mind eventually raise the white flag of metabolic surrender.
There are some people who can do that for decades – and then they drop dead. Comedians dying “too soon” is the surest way to be called a “Genius” in your obituary. I wasn’t and am not now any kind of genius, so when my body began to rebel and scream at me, “Stop it or you’ll die,” I listened. I took a nap. I took several naps.
As a baby it was 22 hours a day. Then I pared that down to 2 hours a day. Extremes are not always good. They can sometimes be fun, but hard on the paint.
After wallowing in the extremes, I moved more toward a middle ground – more sleep and less All-Nite eatery. I began to feel better and, in a great surprise to me, I beca
me more creative. I liked that. I was better at my job.
One of the physiological side effects of having a regular schedule is that you develop an “Internal Alarm Clock.” I haven’t used a real alarm clock in years. After a while my internal Bulova became calibrated to wake me up at 7 AM.
Now that I am “retired” from the daily grind you would think that my clock would let me sleep – No. For the longest time I could go to bed at 2 AM and my eyes would pop open at 7 AM. Go to bed at 10 PM – up at 7 AM. Some evenings I start my sleep in the “Rip van Winkle Memorial chair. That chair is definitely a sedative. I sit down and I am out cold within 10 minutes.
I am now finding that, as I age even more, my need for sleep is diminishing. It is shrinking like a cheap sweater in the dryer. My 7 AM has been turning into 6:45, or 6:30, or even 6:15. I do not like this.
When I wake up I like to turn on the Idiot Box. At 6:30 AM there is not squat on TV. The movie channels are showing silent films or something with subtitles. At that time of day I am not up to
reading a movie. Another 150 channels have infomercials leaving me with Channel Two – the local NBC affiliate that starts every day with some local news and weather – over and over and over and over until the Today Show comes on at – 7 AM.
I fear that if this creeping Reveille continues to get earlier I am going to turn into one of the Bushy-Ear Haired Geezers who are up and prowling around at all hours scaring the neighbor’s dogs when he takes out the trash at in the middle of the night.
Down the Hall on Your Left 
My Internal Alarm goes of at 5:30A no matter what time I go to beddy-bye. Then my body or brain, or both, tells me it’s time to shed some of the liquid I had before retiring. And yes, I can remember younger times when I did as you, concerning staying out late. I seemed to sleep ’till noon when I did that, though. Back then didn’t have the IA thingie.
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