How to stay awake without really trying

Boy, am I ever prepared to write this article. I have just spent the worst night of my life.

How Third World peoples ever sleep on floors or woven mats I will never understand, because I can’t sleep in a real bed with a pillow-top mattress, box springs, sheets, down comforters, and pillows.

Excluding a water bed, in one of which I nearly froze to death, I have every kind of sleeping gear that modern industry can produce. But can I sleep? No!

This is how it went last night: I get into bed gingerly so as not to get my heart rate up or mess up the sheets. I fluff up the pillow gently, and I ease into “position number one.” That’s on my side. Two minutes later and my arm is asleep.

So it’s roll over and on to the next most “successful” position—my back. But about three and a half minutes later my feet hurt. The covers have bent my toes back, and they never took gymnastics.

Roll over and try something else…maybe…no, my elbow is poking my ribs. That won’t work. Try another ninety degree rotation. I am flat on my stomach now which feels great, except I need a snorkel to breathe.

I only have so many sides to try. Look at me and count—right, left, front and back. Yup, that’s four sides which is not nearly enough. After twelve and a half minutes I have exhausted all of the possibilities and not one of them could produce enough comfort to induce sleep.

I am back to side number one and the pillow feels like a bag of bones, the wrinkles in the sheets make depressions in my hips and they begin to itch, my nightgown didn’t follow along with the last roll over, and somewhere near the middle of the bed there comes a black hole sucking me up, bed clothes and all.

Then my brain switches into sprint speed. I begin to remember everything I ever forgot to do like take out the garbage in June of 2005. And what is the significance of remembering something so insignificant? Am I in the middle stages of Alzheimer’s?

If not that, then for sure a brain tumor. Maybe that’s why my legs are twitching. And isn’t my heart beating too fast? (If it wasn’t before, the specter of a brain tumor is enough to push up the tempo.) Oh, great, I’m going to die of a stroke right here in my bed and no one will ever know. No one.

Now my back and arms begin to ache. They are probably tired from straining to stay out of the black hole. Maybe if I get up and find something to fill it up… (Now even you are considering the probability of a brain tumor, aren’t you?)

While I’m up, I’ll fix the sheets. What is this lump? Maybe it’s a pea. No, it’s a sock.

What am I going to fix for breakfast in the morning? If morning ever gets here. Oh! I forgot I was out of eggs. What am I going to do now? Maybe it’s starvation that will get me.

What’s that noise? Besides snoring, I mean. Did I leave the space heater on? Did I pay the homeowners’ insurance premium last week?

I’m having a hard time finding a way to end this travail. I wish I could say that I finally fell fast asleep and lived happily the rest of the night. But I didn’t. Once I nearly got comfortable, but then my “bigger half” turned over.