Sleep
This post was originally a part of the now defunct Somnaplegic blog.
There is a special circle of atheist hell for people who disturb other people’s sleep. Serial snorers. Heavy sleepers that set series of early loud alarms and then sleep through them while neighbors, roommates, and partners are left wide awake. Midnight music blasters. Anyone with wanton disregard for the rest of others deserves no mercy. Their punishments will be grandiose and merciless. Forced to watch those videos of deeply unsatisfying acts: puzzles missing pieces, tiles laid out-of-pattern, people mangling soft fleshed fruits with butter knives. Made to eat nothing but powdered reconstituted eggs and Tang. Forced to watch all but the last episodes of shows like Lost and Breaking Bad. Dressed eternally in mohair clown suits.
Given that I’m the one who most disturbs my own sleep, it’s a good thing I don’t believe in atheist hell.
My mother has been an early riser my whole life. She’s always claimed that she couldn’t sleep in. She would roam the house before dawn on weekends cleaning or puttering, but mostly doing something that involved making a lot of noise. As a child, this seemed like madness to me. Despite my frequent nightmares, I mostly slept like all other children, limp, inert, and insensate to anything short of a good shaking and a lot of yelling. As an adult I’m the lightest of sleepers, waking frequently throughout the night to flop and flip around. The slightest noise or temperature fluctuation will rouse me. I wake early, even on weekends, and roam around the house doing chores, and making lists, and growing increasingly bitter at the Y chromosomes in my family who blithely lie abed, mouths hanging open, limbs akimbo.
Often, my husband will wake in the morning and complain, “I didn’t sleep for shit last night.”
“Really,” I respond with a cocked eyebrow, “Sorry to hear that. You were quite dead asleep the 5 times I woke up to your snoring.” Sometimes, he falls asleep in the middle of a sentence (mine or his, doesn’t matter). These are the times when I plot his downfall. You will be punished I think, lying sleepless beside him, cataloging the petty revenges I will inflict, punished for your heinous crimes. No one sleeps until I sleep. Oh you will know it was me who took those 5 dimes out of the car console so you can only buy one soda at the vending machine at work!
This is a list of things I’ve done to my husband while he was sleeping (and snoring):
Called him names – “Hey, Toe Lint. You sound exactly like the fan on a Sega Dreamcast.”
Placed pillows and stacks of laundry on top of him – Fort Spouse, an impenetrable edifice rises from the bedrock of memory foam.
Combed his arm hair in a Dapper Dan style part and spoken for it in an excessively nasally French accent
Stuck my pinky finger up his nose to the second knuckle – No, seriously I did this and he didn’t even wake up. It’s creepy and not OK (him not waking up, not me sticking my finger up his nose. That was the only rational response to the remarkably chain saw like sound he was emitting.)
Picked lint out of his belly button – I’m drawn to his cavernous navel like sailors to sirens. I must plumb it’s depths and extract its riches.
My husband would add to the list that I have, on multiple occasions, left long jagged scratches on him while he slept. It’s at least partially true. For the last few years, once every few months, he wakes up with inexplicable scratches he didn’t have when he went to bed. One across his belly was 7 inches long. One was on his forehead in plain view. I don’t find it entirely unbelievable that I would scratch him in my sleep. I grow long, strong nails, with great speed (a part of the borderline hirsutism that marks our entire family), but I’m pretty darned sure that even his legendary heavy sleeping wouldn’t extend to a clawing session. I think he’s doing it to himself. Then again, he bites his fingernails down to nubs, so who can say?
Every day, my mom would wake up at 5am and begin her elephant stomping around the house. Most mornings her stomping ended when she headed out for a 6am (or sometimes earlier) start time at work. Sundays, and weekdays that aligned with school days off were another matter. She grudgingly agreed to that we could sleep in until the unreasonably late hour of 7 am. After which, all bets were off. In my mothers terms, I was a lollygagging sleeper-inner. Not knowing anything else, I actually believed that sleeping until 7am was a great luxury. In reality, I was awake 6:45 each day. I had to be fully alert and curled into a protective ball by 7am.
At 6:45, the heavy sliding glass door to the back yard would open and close. At at 6:57 it would open again to the sounds of excited yips and canine whuffling. I could hear my mother’s voice, high pitched and encouraging overlaid by the excited click-click-click of dog nails running first over the stone in the living room and then down the parquet floor in the long L-shaped hallway which dead ended at my door. She would herd them, stomp-stomp-stomp, all the way, “Let’s get the kid!”
A shut or locked door was no good. My Westie had long since figured out that the strike plate to my door was misaligned and would give way with a firm bonk of the head. The dogs would pour into my room and hop up on the bed. That alone would have been fine, they had achieved their destination and would happily settle down with me. That’s when mom started phase 2. She would jab in the direction of the hidden lump under the covers. The dogs, being faithful canine-human companions, would rally to defend the sleeping child against attack. Of course, mounting a vigorous defense involved a lot of darting and jumping about the bed . . . right on top of me.
This morning ritual was how I was introduce to the concept of pounds per square inch or PSI. The practical effect of which being that even a tiny object could apply a substantial amount of force if the force was concentrated in a small area . . . like say the tiny, pokey feet of a 13 pound dog.
My mother thought this was hysterical and only just. Those who dared to sleep while she was awake and productive deserved what they got.
Early one Saturday morning, before the usual 7am massacre, I heard her coming down the hallway in an excited shuffle-rush-stomp. She burst into the room squee-ing excitedly, “Look what I found!”
One thing was bloody sure. I was NOT going to look at whatever she had cupped in her hands attempting to shove right into my face.
“Look, I found it in the fish pond!”
“NOPE!” I grumbled from underneath the covers.
“But it’s so cute!”
“PUT IT BACK. If you found it in the pond, then it belongs in the pond.”
“But you NEED to see it.”
It didn’t take rocket science to figure out that she’d found a tiny frog. I was an important step in the development of our fish pond. Outside aquatic life had found its way in to our little black plastic lined hole and thought, “Hey, this place seems cool.” Then a giant hand reached down and carted it off to the bedroom of a very grouchy teenager. Frogs are cute, but there are PRINCIPLES. It was not 7am, and no sane person wakes another person up with terrified frog to the face. No doubt the poor creature no longer though our pond a “cool” place to hang out.
She shuffle-stomped away sadly, frog still clutched in her hand.
I am far more gracious than my mother. I let my own spawn sleep in to at least 7:30 on the weekends. Frequently, after some harassment, he will get up, relocate to the couch, and promptly fall back asleep. Other times he doesn’t get even that far. He chooses poorly.
Unlike my mother. I don’t use hapless amphibians in my petty torture schemes. I use dead pigs.
I don’t remember exactly what inspired the first Face-Baconing, but it typically goes as follows. I get up at the very reasonable hour of 5am on Sunday, do some laundry, tidy the house, answer emails, and make a list of chores for the day. The Y Chromosomes know that the longer they leave me alone the longer the list of chores assigned to them will grow, but this has not proved at all useful in getting them up. Once the list has hit critical mass (I mean, it’s technically possible to complete 22 hours worth of chores in one day . . . if you’re on meth), I start making breakfast. I never cease to be surprised that a house full of bacon smoke doesn’t awaken the Y Chromosomes. There’s always smoke, because my new gas oven is a jerk and the fan above it is woefully inadequate. Once the breakfast is done we’re officially in penalty overtime. Every second they don’t pop up bright eyed and bushy-tailed is another mark on the black list. Really, a little face-baconing is a small punishment.
My son disagrees. He finds it weird, creepy, off-putting, and a violation of his personal space and human dignity. I say, that if the atheist gods didn’t want us to take pictures of our offspring asleep with bacon on their faces, they wouldn’t have made it so damned funny. First there is the giddy rush of gently placing the bacon across a ruddy pink cheek or on the porcelain brow. Then there’s the mad flailing and face slapping as his reptile brain tries to ward off an alien insect attack. This is followed by a well-articulated, “What the F#@k! What is wrong with you? Who puts bacon on people’s faces?” I’ve been doing this since he was 9 years old. It may be bad parenting, but watching an adorable ginger moppet curse like a sailor is highly amusing. And like I said, no Amphibians were harmed, so it’s cool.
*This post was originally a part of the now defunct Somnaplegic blog.
