Response: When In Rome
Yeah, if I had a gun to my head I'd definitely pick deaf over blind, too. 'Course if I had a gun to my head that choice would probably be the least of my worries.
Today my biggest sleep problem is not falling asleep, but staying asleep. When I was a baby, so the legend goes, I was a playah. My mom said I did everything at full speed with the knob set at 11. Instead of making the twice daily mistake of trying to get me to take a nap, she would just listen for the noise to stop and then go into whatever room I had been playing in, find me conked out and throw a blanket over me. If I was playing outside, she'd usually just leave me in whatever dirt pile or flower bed I happened to be in. There are legions of pictures of me crashed amid a sea of Tootsietoys or Fisher-Price people in a distended pose like some victim of a street crime awaiting his chalkline, a Hot Wheel in one hand and G. I. Joe in the other. Sometimes I'd be clad in flannel PJs with a tool belt on and other times no pants and cowboy boots. Apparently my parents and sister thought this was hilarious as these are damn near the only pictures of me extant.
But then, probably about the time I started school, I was given the obligatory Bedtime. I don't remember what the time was, but it definitely did not fit my lifestyle. It also did not come easy for my folks. I cried; I sang; I tried reading under the sheets with a flashlight. I was always busted. I realize now the poor people just wanted a break from their annoying kid, but at the time I figured if I couldn't be in there watching TV or talking with them, they were going to pay for it. I unleashed annoying chants. I whined their names in strident tenors. I asked for water in annoying accents. I feigned imaginary attacks by various creatures from gnawing rodents to full-on monsters. No aid was forthcoming. Eventually, my rhythmic chants backfired on me and I lulled myself to sleep.
But in the mid-Seventies I learned about the Rapture and my sleep patterns were altered for years. After I saw Thief in the Night I couldn't sleep for days. My parents had a strict no-climbing-into-their-bed rule so I would sleep in a ball at the foot of their bed, getting the wind knocked out me when they stepped on me in the morning. My overactive mind would race some nights with all sorts of permutations of the Rapture. Once when I was 12, I couldn't go to sleep for about two months because I thought the Romans would come and kill me for being a Christian. Yeah, those Romans. With the sandals and the togas. The way I had it figured a centurion would draw his sword and ask me if I believed in Jesus. If I said yes, he would kill me. If I said no, I would burn in hell. Like Jesus and the Devil were the NAPA Auto Parts guys: "You can pay me now, or you can pay me later." It's funny now, but I spent the majority of my childhood nights in a cold sweat praying the Rapture would hold off for a couple more hours. And I spent the rest of the nights worrying about whether I would worry about the Rapture. Because the truth is, I just was not all that thrilled about the prospect of Heaven. As terrified as I was about the sulfuric denizens below, I found the idea of Heaven positively boring and that set me off on another dizzying maze of anxiety. Ennui is my idea of Hell and I viewed the glory-basking, praising and dead-relative-visiting of Heaven as ennui. So if my idea of Heaven is Hell, then, well, you see where it leads.
Finally, when I got to ninth grade or so, I could go to bed when I wanted and so I reverted back to my old way of crashing dead asleep wherever. I was a true sleep nomad, Queen. I'd sleep upstairs, downstairs, my sister's room, the den, the living room, the couch, the chair. Wherever and whenever sleep overtook me. There was no anxiety because I my mind was better occupied. But I'm scarred. If for any reason I wake up in the middle of the night, I absolutely cannot go back to sleep. If I wake up momentarily, I can usually drift back into sleep, but if I actually get out of bed, that's it. I'm up. Doesn't matter when I went to bed, how long I've slept. I'm up. Just last night I went to bed at 12:30 and at 4:11, SGK crawled in our bed. So I lead her back into her bed and before I could get back into mine, the ol' noodle kicked in. I don't worry about Romans anymore, but I do worry about my job, how I paid too much for this house, the girls getting into bad relationships with blues musicians, and how I'm going to die and when I'm going to die. And sometimes when I think about that...once in awhile...just maybe...a thought about Heaven or Hell might creep in and get the heart racing a little. Usually I can rationalize and make it go away, but some nights it's harder than others.
But I do have two mighty weapons in my quiver... well, technically three: knitting and ear plugs. If I sleep with ear plugs, I usually can sleep through any noise - of course that includes smoke alarms, car alarms and home invasions, but you have to draw the line somewhere. L'il Saint or SGK can still wake me up, though. And if they wake me up, I just sit in my La-Z-Boy and start knitting and I'm out again in minutes. Knitting is my neutron bomb in the sleep wars.
Labels: rapture, Romans, sleep
posted by St. Fiacre @ 10:56 AM,
1 Comments:
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At Wednesday, September 27, 2006 1:48:00 PM,
Adjective Queen said...
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We've got pictures of my nephew, dead asleep on the toilet. It is absolutely hilarious, but when the battery ran out, he'd fall asleep wherever he was. I want to see the pics of you in those cowboy boots!
