The Science of Sleep

Karen came over. She shook her cane at me.

"Careful with that thing," I said, cringing.

"Ha. Ha. Ha." She emitted each laugh like an oversized bellows operated by Johnny Depp's Willy Wonka. "So how did your sleep thing go?"

Over the last few months I've been having worse and worse problems staying awake, and it had nothing to do with Jonah talking to me about Hegel. Even while doing interviews I'd feel woozy and on the point of blacking out. A candidate would talk about what good customer service meant to them and I'd sink into that well the Ringu girl came out of. I told my doctor about it and, once he had explored my rectum thoroughly, he concluded I might have sleep apnea. A sleep kit thingy was ordered. I went to the hospital to have a portly fellow with a breathing problem (meant as irony, I suppose) explain to me how I put the clamps on my nipples and hook the straps around my blubber.

"Greg?"

"What! Sorry, I was just writing a long paragraph. Anyway, it wasn't the most beautiful night of sleep I've ever had, no. Nor was it particularly twee.

But it's done, at least. Now they analyze the data and see if I'll need another rectal exam, or two."

"Ha. Ha. Ha. You should blog about it! Did you take a picture of yourself with all that stuff on?"

"I thought about it, but decided my blog reader has suffered enough. I'm not sure this is sufficiently interesting to blog about."

Karen proceed to yell at me about other issues, doing her Ahab-on-crack routine which kept me awake if nothing else. Finally, satisfied that all the doubloons were taken care of, she finally decided to leave for the day. But no sooner had she hobbled out the door than she came back.

"I have to put a note on my rental car!" she announced. She had been in an accident a few days ago, and was now suing the elderly gentleman. In the meantime she was driving a car with a Missouri license plate.

"Did someone slash the tires?"

A customer told me several cars had had their tires slashed in the parking lot over the weekend. And then R. had a note left on her car, criticizing her parking skills. A lot of hot action was happening in our parking lot. Take a walk through it, people!

"No, no. I want to let people know this is a rental and I'm not from Missouri."

Zany shook her hot copper locks. "What?? I don't think anyone cares where you're from."

Karen ignored her, carefully inscribing on a piece of paper:

THIS CAR IS A RENTAL.

I'M A NATIVE.

Then she left again, jingoistic sheet in one hand and cane in the other, jerking about like Johnny Depp's Charlie Chaplin.

"Greg," Jonah said. "There's a customer who wants to talk about how to end this blog post."

"Tell them I'm sleeping."

"You are not, sir," Jonah said, using impeccable Hegelian logic.

"Oh, yeah?"

I started to snore theatrically. Jonah backed away, respectful of my condition. Maybe I shouldn't have them fix this, after all?