From a very young age I have had a strange relationship with sleep. I like being asleep. For the most part I really enjoy being awake. It is the transition between the two that I have always struggled with.
When I was a young boy I used to hate going to sleep. I have never been the type of person who can easily pass into dreamland as soon as his head hits the pillow. I would lay in my bed and contemplate the silence. My mind would start to wander. Undoubtedly it would settle on the evil that was just outside my window, plotting how to get inside. I planned out escape routes and developed action plans for when the intruder finally came to murder me.
Nowadays things are not much different. I still lay in bed and imagine what I would do if someone were to come crashing through the big window on the front of the house. However, most of the time my mind just wanders; jumping from one thought to the next; all connected by a series of loose strings. My mind will be so active that it becomes nearly impossible to fall asleep. One strategy that I have for relaxing myself and slowing down my brain is to focus on a single memory and try to recall every detail I possibly can. If I put all of my effort onto one thing from my past it will hopefully keep my mind from jumping on the thought train that is always chugging away from slumber.
The other night I randomly chose to focus on something from the third grade. I have several memories that popped into my head, but my mind settled onto a morning from March or April of my third grade year. It was time for a story, and we were still young enough that the entire class got out of our desks and went to "the carpet". I remember sitting there with my legs crossed. I was wearing jeans, a gray sweatshirt, and my white and blue LA Gear pump tennis shoes. I was absent-mindedly pumping air into the tongue of the shoe, then releasing it with a hiss. I don't even remember the story my teacher was reading, but can clearly remember messing with my shoe.
As we sat on the carpet we all heard a scream come from a nearby classroom. This was nothing to worry about. One of the other 3rd grade classes was putting on a play. One scene required Jessica Bollinger to get up on top of a desk and scream. We hadn't got to watch the play yet, but would see it the next day. I was mildly excited about watching this play, but more excited about another performance. We had a janitor at my elementary school named Carl that was exceptional at speaking pig latin. He apparently was fluent in it. He didn't have to pause to think about how the words should sound, they just came out like normal speech. His go-to performance piece was to sing Old McDonald Had A Farm completely in pig latin. Other kids had heard him do this, but I had never got the chance. Carl was supposed to come to our classroom and allow us all to observe his talent after the play was over. I was very excited about this.
The next day came and we watched the play. For some reason Carl wasn't able to make it in, so we didn't get to hear Old McDonald. We were promised it at a later date, but that didn't ease my overwhelming sense of disappointment I felt at the time. Even now lying in my bed I can remember how that news felt. To this day I have never heard Carl sing Old McDonald, or speak any pig latin for that matter. I am beginning to give up hope that it will ever happen for me.
As I lay in bed my mind had started to focus on pig latin. I didn't speak pig latin much. One of the few instances I attempted it now came to the forefront of my brain. I was in the car somewhere between Indiana and Florida. Accompanying me in the car was my mother and grandmother. Also along for the trip was a childhood friend, Janessa Mast. We were speaking pig latin and I inadvertently sang the pig latin form of the f-bomb. My face turned red, but none of the adults seemed to notice. For some reason that moment is burned into my brain.
Now my thoughts had turned to all those long car rides to Florida. One of my most clear memories from the car involves my sister, and a piece of chewing gum. It was night time and the inside of the car was completely dark. We often drove straight through the night. This must have been one of those times. I was sitting in the back seat of the car with my older sister. She had peen chewing a piece of gum and decided it was time to discard it. She took the gum out of her mouth and rolled it into a smooth ball between her fingers. She put her window down a bit and attempted to throw the gum out. Her aim was off and it hit the window, bouncing off somewhere in backseat of the car.
We couldn't see the gum in the darkness, and had no clue where it had gone. We strained our eyes to find the white ball, and tried not to move. It was impossible to see anything in the dark, but luckily we had a flashlight. My sister picked up the flashlight off the floor and turned it on. We looked everywhere for this gum, but no luck. I am not sure how long we looked, but it seemed like a long time. We were about to give up and turn the flashlight off when my sister made a discovery. Right there, stuck to the back end of the very flashlight she had been holding the entire time was the small ball of gum. It was so crazy. At the time it was such an impressive freak occurrence. It seemed completely amazing to me. I have always suspected she placed the gum there, but I am not sure why she would have.
This memory transitioned into another random coincidence I experience during college. I was getting a sharp knife out to cut something when I lost my grip and dropped it. I was bare-footed so I instinctively jumped aside to avoid injury. To my surprise I never heard or saw the knife hit the ground. It had seemingly vanished. I had no explanation, or idea where the knife had gone. After a few moments of searching I realized where it was at. I was wearing Old Navy khaki shorts that had a very slender pocket down towards the bottom. The knife had gone handle-first into the pocket. The blade was sticking out, waiting for me to reach down and stab myself. Seriously, the pocket was barely wider than the knife handle. The placement and trajectory must have been perfect for it to go in. Amazing.
Anyway, you get the idea of what my head is like when I am trying to fall asleep. Even though I attempted to focus on one single memory, I still boarded the thought train. This sort of thing can continue on for what seems like hours. During college I developed a strategy that used to work really well. I would listen to really sleepy-type music with headphones. I was able to focus on the music and stop my mind from thinking so much. Lately I have run into problems. The music just started to become background noise for my journeys through the past. It didn't seem to work anymore. For the past year I have been listening to spoken word audio. I can focus on what the people are saying, yet I still find it soothing enough to put me to sleep. For the most part I listen to podcasts. I have found some really great ones. I mentioned The Tobolowsky Files in a previous post. I will dedicated a future post to some of my other favorites. Sometimes I get really interested in what they are talking about, which also keeps me awake. However, most of the time it occupies my mind enough to keep it from wandering, but still not engaging me so much that I can't relax and fall asleep. Somehow I recognize that I am about to cross over into dreamland and I remove my headphones, turn off my iPod, and sit them on my nightstand. I hardly ever remember doing this, but I have never woken up with my iPod or headphones in the bed with me.
Sorry this is such a long post. Thanks for taking the trip though my stream of consciousness.
