To Sleep Perchance to Dream

Sleep is a funny thing. Some people are really good at it while others, like myself, seem to have been stuck with the short end of the stick. For whatever reason, I only average about 3.5 hours of sleep on a given night and rise with the dawn, one of the many reasons I’m a big fan of overcast, cloudy days.

This hasn’t always been the case, however. I’m fairly certain my personal predicament kicked in about August of 2005, right after I had a really rough case of mono (5 days of no sleep and no food). Years later after I had moved out to California and tried a bevy of prescription sleep aids and herbal remedies and blood sacrifices I finally got around to going in for a sleep apnea test. The results?

“This young man slept extraordinarily well.”

LIES. I slept like crap, though the report insists otherwise. In fact, I went back through my emails looking for the report and stumbled across a recounting I sent my father.

“I had no time-telling device with me, so I won't know how much I actually slept until my doctor got the results [ed: 7 hours and 6 minutes] , but I had no less than four distinct dreams before the study came to a blessed end. The first three were all the same except for minor differences. In all three I suddenly found myself somewhere in or around the hospital late at night wondering how I got there. I would eventually make my way back to the sleep study room to find out what was going on only to wake up. The second time this happened was annoying; the third was beginning to piss me off.

The cake though was the final dream, which once again had me wandering the hospital (electrodes and trailing wires still attached) but this time it was during the day and populated. I couldn't leave the hospital because there was still something that needed to be done in regards to the sleep test, but I couldn't figure out what. I finally found a clock and it said 11am, then 1pm and I thought I should call my boss and let him know I was going to be late. So I plunk myself down in a chair in the lobby and call the office, getting what must have been a temp, who picked up the phone and didn't acknowledge me for a good twenty seconds as she was knee deep in her own conversation with another co-worker. I ask for Francisco and she puts me on hold. As I'm waiting Francisco suddenly sits down in the chair across from me, cell to his ear. I have a little 'WTF?!' moment and then tell him I'm going to be late. He says not to worry and hands me a sheet of paper. It turns out that I, along with two other people, have had our hours reduced due to the strike and my new schedule for Monday and Tuesday (the only one's that I see clearly) are now 2pm – 5pm, so I actually haven't missed anything at all.”

It is rare that I can so clearly recall the contents of my dream; I can count on a little over one hand the number of times this has happened. Suffice to say this experience contrasted sharply with the report I was given. I still don’t know why I’m so bad at sleeping, but after seven years by body has gotten used to it, so…c’est la vie.

Anyone else out there have interesting sleep habits?