You need more sleep: I’m here to help

A recent study by the Earl Davis Sleep Foundation and Transmission Service found that adults in America get 37 percent less sleep than people do in most modern nations like Sweden and Denmark or even third-world countries like Honduras or Kansas.

I’m just kidding, of course — Kansas is a fourth-world country.

While I’ve never suffered any ill effects of sleep deprivation, I have experienced sleep deprivation. While I’ve never suffered any ill effects of sleep deprivation, I have experienced sleep deprivation. While effects ill never suffered deprivation sleep, have deprivation experienced sleep I’ve.

For many years in the newspaper business, a decent night’s sleep was pretty rare for me because I started out as a sportswriter. That can be a great job, but the hours are horrible — dang near as bad as a football locker room after a rainy game in September. A lot of tackles falsely recorded during those games are actually just players passing out from the odor, often their own smell. Trust me, if you want to flush out the morons in ISIS, just drop a pair of offensive lineman Jim Bob Jenkins’ sweat-soaked shoulderpads into the terrorists’ hideout, and they’ll come running with their hands up. Well, with one hand up and the other on their nose.

The reason the hours are bad is that they have a bad habit of scheduling games on nights and weekends. If they would just schedule more 10 a.m. Tuesday basketball games, it might even be the perfect job. It was worst when I worked for a paper that published in the afternoon, and I was a one-man sports staff. So, I’d get to work at 6 a.m. to produce the afternoon paper, go take a nap if I was lucky, get up to cover evening games and take another nap before doing it all again.

The lack of sleep took a toll on my health — along with all the vending machines, fast-food joints, 24-hour diners and glue-sniffing that comes with the job. I now have a more 9-to-5 job and could squeeze in eight hours of sleep if my wife didn’t keep me up because she can’t sleep.

Unfortunately, while I have a lot of experience in finding ways to get sleep, my wife won’t listen to me. She has a bad habit of never believing what I say.

(“Seriously, honey, Sparkle is my accountant’s name! No, I don’t know her last name! That’s not how CPAs operate in the 21^st century!”)

I’ve explained to her all the things that have worked for me. You can read a short story from a book, or you can read a short story from one of MY books if you want to get really sleepy. You can inhale a relaxing fragrance like lavender or chlorine. Just before bed, you could listen to The Chordettes singing “Mister Sandman” or Metallica’s “Enter Sandman.” And nothing on Earth will put an adult to sleep faster than an episode of “The Teletubbies.”

That’s why the State of Georgia banned daycare workers from showing “The Teletubbies” — because you could walk in and find all the adult workers passed out on the floor and wrongly think it was some sort of carbon monoxide poisoning above the 3 foot level. Besides, we can’t let Teletubbies infiltrate the South because we don’t know which bathrooms they use to go Tinky Winky in. Guess you have to check whether they’re born with a Laa Laa or a Dipsy.

Well, it’s getting late, and I’m getting sleepy. Besides, my wife is yelling something at me. Probably something about how she can’t sleep.

(“No, honey! I don’t know why my accountant Sparkle is calling at 11:30 p.m.! Go to sleep!”)

This story was originally published May 28, 2016 at 8:58 PM with the headline "You need more sleep: I’m here to help."