Some young smart alec recently asked me what I missed most about being a kid.
“Sleep,” I said. “The unfettered ability to flop down anywhere at any time and sleep.”
Babies, I seem to recall, sleep all the time, except between the hours of midnight and 4 a.m. Between the ages of two and six, kids run at turnpike speed until they run out of gas and slip into a coma. A friend of mine used to wait until the noise stopped, then go search for his five-year-old son. He usually found him in the middle of the floor, asleep in mid-stride, toys still in hand.
By the time kids reach the teen years, they have perfected sleep to a precise art form. I once drove from western Nebraska to central Missouri with my teenage granddaughter in the passenger seat. She woke only to use the restroom when I stopped for gas and when something deep within her unconscious psyche told her she was hungry. And, oh yeah, she had just gotten out of bed when we started the trip.
When I was a kid I could sleep through anything. Yelling, loud parties, thunderstorms – nothing got in. A restaurant on the corner exploded one night because of a gas leak. The blast shook the ground for miles around and apparently dumped me out of bed. I never heard a thing despite waking up the next morning on the floor.
In college I learned I could stay awake most of the night studying and catch up on sleep in 15-minute spurts between classes. Later in the military, I was able to sleep anywhere, outdoors in the rain, on a pile of rocks and even standing up, propped against a tree. We had one guy in our outfit that could actually drift off while marching.
Early in my career I loved weekends because I could sleep for 12 hours straight, get up, eat something and go back to sleep. Somewhere on the south side of 60, however, I lost that ability. I started waking in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom.
Then there is my stuffy nose, and some pesky arthritis in at least half of my joints. Before I can get to sleep I have to thrash around for a few minutes until I find a position that will allow me to breathe and to be relatively pain-free.
Luckily, I have discovered an over-the-counter allergy medicine that helps clear my nose. It also has the sweet side effect of making me sleepy. The odd thing is, it’s made for children. It says so right on the label.
And they don’t need it.
