I learn while I sleep — when my wife stops shaking me awake
By Burton W. Cole
If people paid wads of money to buy instructional tapes to listen to while they sleep, how come my wife gets upset when I nod off while she’s talking?
Aren’t my snores solid proof enough that I AM affording her my full concentration to the point that I am willing to not just listen to her, but to learn everything she says? Isn’t it enough that I have shut out all other distractions by falling asleep so that I can fully absorb her observations?
Apparently not.
She keeps interrupting my efforts, jerking me bolt upright and off course with, “Oh, just go to bed!”
I ask Terry why my good intentions irritate her so. “Self-hypnosis tapes while you sleep used to be a big deal.”
“Used to be,” she said. “There’s a reason it USED to be—because you aren’t hearing a thing I say when you you’re asleep.”
“That’s how much you say I listen when I’m awake. So what’s the difference?”
I wish I’d been asleep throughout her whole, heated explanation of what difference it made. Sadly, I was awake for that.
Obviously, Terry never will be a deep thinker. She has no appreciation for the finer points of the art.
Why are we, as a society, so opposed to sleep? For being one of the healthiest, intellectually stimulating things a body can do, there is plenty of prejudice against it.
Just try taking a nap on the job to improve your performance. Bosses never appreciate the thoughtfulness and care you put into it. (If the bosses got more sleep themselves, maybe they wouldn’t be so cranky.)
Sometimes it seems that nature itself is stacked against sleep.
Most jobs have a design flaw — the starting time is well before noon. Meanwhile, West Coast sports and Monday Night Football drag on past midnight, at which time, if you have any sick kids about in the house, they will begin throwing up on the carpet. Once you get settled into bed, the dog wants outside. And pretty soon the alarm clock is making that annoying racket.
Then the sun blasts through the windows, and no one will let you sleep — neighbors, traffic, your car-pool passengers, bosses, clients, spouses, they’re all against it.
In high school, geography and world history were two of my worst subjects despite all the concentrated effort I put forth. I’d hate to think how much worse my grades would have been had I not slept through classes.
By college, I improved my technique. Instead of merely sleeping in my journalism editing class — which started at the ridiculously early time of 7:20 in the morning — I worked even harder by often staying in bed in my dorm room, absorbing all the editing techniques that I could.
It was because of that extra effort that I was able to pull off a “D.” But it was worth it. Today, I earn my living as a newspaper lifestyles editor. When I told my boss how hard I had worked to learn my craft by not going to class, she said she’d already suspected it was something like that.
So you see, people notice when you apply yourself.
It’s the smart thing to ... hello? Hello? Hey, out there! Are you listening?
Oh. I see. You’re committing this instruction to memory. Good idea. I believe I’ll sit back and catch a few minutes of dedication myself.
Sleep expert Cole is lobbying to replace his desk chair with a recliner. Write him at burton.w.cole@gmail.com, the Burton W. Cole page on Facebook or at www.burtonwcole.com.