It may have happened once in my lifetime. But I do not ever recall waking up to the rude shock of an alarm clock and thinking, “Finally! I was really tired of sleeping just now.”
It seems I am not alone. The good folks over at the Gallup organization, who never seem to sleep, have once again directed their scientific queries at the sleeping habits of modern-day Americans.
Turns out, the answers they got this time revealed a surprising new pattern, which is the topic of this week’s audio commentary. And their results reveal varying new sleep patterns among different age groups.
Personally, I’ve had a mixed relationship with slumber over the years. I didn’t mind, for instance, on summer nights after watching fireflies for a while, but my mother insisted on daytime sleeps. They were not only boring but tended to interrupt my plans for other idle activities with friends outdoors. So we had some frictions there.
One time many years ago, I belonged to a babysitting co-op of young parents on tight budgets in an urban apartment building. Sit with someone’s baby for an evening and get an equal amount of free babysitting time in return from the building’s bank.
One night, I had a baby in a playpen in the living room. Awaiting his parents’ return, I was reading my employer’s newspaper, page by page.
Every few minutes though, the kid would break out shrieking. I mean really crying like he’d encountered some evil monster. I’d jump up, all worried, and rush over to him. Seconds later, though, he was back blissfully asleep like the sweet little angel his parents knew him to be
I stood there a minute to make sure. No throw-up. That was a good sign. And there he was snoozing away peacefully.
So, I’d return to my easy chair and resume reading the newspaper.
Sure enough, in a few minutes he’d go back to loud crying. I feared he’d wake up my own little one. So, I’d jump up again to repeat the cycle. This went on pretty much the entire evening.
Finally, shortly after 11, his grateful parents returned. The mother inquired how everything went. I said, “Just fine. Except every once in a while, he’d suddenly start screaming. But when I went over, he would fall back asleep. I hope he’s okay.”
“That is strange,” the mother said. “He only does that when he hears us reading the newspaper.”
“Oh, really?” I said. “Well, he, uh, seems fine now.”
Leave your favorite sleep stories in the Comments.
A truism of all political campaigns is that the most valuable thing is not money. It’s the candidate’s time. There’s only so much of that. And you can’t buy or make more of it.
This week’s column looks at how Donald Trump is handling the lawfare trials thrown at him to consume his campaign time. Turns out, the former president has worked out his own unique solution, as usual.
Speaking of valuable resources, the most recent audio commentary examined an unanticipated problem with the nationwide drive to install solar-energy panels on millions of rooftops across the U.S.
Finally, you may have heard a little something in recent weeks about pro-Hamas and anti-Israeli demonstrations on the nation’s college campuses and roads. As you might expect, RedState’s long list of contributors scattered across the country are on top of the story.
Find the posts here and on the front page.