I
was reading this week’s issue of Sports
Illustrated (April 21, 2014) and saw where some talking head said ‘athletes
should sleep about 8.2 to 8.4 hours per 24.’
Then this little nugget: ‘A person who goes a week with four hours of
sleep per night has impairment equivalent to a blood-alcohol level of .1%.’
So immediately my thought balloon kicked into hyper drive:
Is a person who has run 10 miles a day for over 35 years considered an
‘athlete?’
If so, what if this athlete averaged 5 ½ hours of sleep ‘per 24’ for those
35+ years?
Wouldn’t that translate to at least a blood-alcohol level of .08, the
legal limit in Georgia?
Has this person in fact been ‘legally intoxicated’ for well over three
decades?
If
the last question can be answered with a simple ‘yes’ it would explain a
lot. It might very well be the reason:
·
Sometimes I can’t remember if I ran a particular
½-mile loop through a particular subdivision during my morning run. Fortunately I can usually tell by looking at my
chronograph once the run is over. Well,
except for the morning runs when I have to make a pit stop (or two) at the
24-hour Kroger because those intermittent times out always mess up my
splits.
·
I can’t find the former Yugoslavia on a world
map, even though I went on a ski trip to Sarajevo in 1985—the year after the
Winter Olympics were held there. Truth be known, I’m not sure I knew where
Yugoslavia could be found on a world map even when it was still known as
Yugoslavia. Then again, geography has
never been one of my strong suits.
·
I have a tendency to bounce off objects (walls,
desks, automobiles) to the left of me.
Then again, balance has never been one of my strong suits, either.
·
I watched the 4th Die Hard movie a couple weeks ago and
couldn’t remember if I had seen it before.
To make matters worse, after I watched it all the way through I still
didn’t know.
·
If it weren’t for GPS I would never find
anything, regardless of how clear the directions are, how prominent the signs
are leading to the destination or how familiar I am with the route because I
drive it at least once a week.
·
Bad hair days?
I have bad balance days, bad coordination days, bad articulation days,
bad vision days and bad (Read: incredibly short) attention span days. Not to mention the
Good-Lord-why-am-I-having-so-much-trouble-eating-corn-on-the-cob days.
·
I occasionally can’t remember if I brushed my
teeth in the morning. The easiest way
for me to know is to squeeze the bristles on my toothbrush to see if they’re
still wet. If so, then I check the
bedroom to make sure none of the cats are under the bed, thus ruling out the
possibility that said cat(s) chewed on my toothbrush while I was in the shower.
·
Possum
Kingdom by the Toadies (1995) was playing during music trivia one night and
for the life of me I couldn’t remember the name of the song. That song has now been around for almost 20
years and I imagine I’ve heard it a couple hundred times and have known the
name of it every single time, except for the one time when it really mattered.
·
I tend to trip over things I’ve never tripped
over before. Slight cracks in the
sidewalk, small cat toys, sticks with diameters larger than a plastic straw,
plastic straws…
·
I hit a personal low when I couldn’t remember if
Rhode Island was a state. To make
matters worse I once lived in Quonset Point for three years. You know: Quonset Point, Rhode Island.
So
I’m feeling a little bit better about myself.
I’ve firmly established that I have IN FACT been legally intoxicated
almost every single day since the early ‘80’s.
Excluding, of course the two or three days each year I manage to ‘sleep
in’ that never amounts to anything more than seven hours of sleep. In other words, when I sleep in it’s the
equivalent of starting the day with only a couple shots of Peppermint Schnapps
instead of my usual six-pack of beer.
As
far as the immediate future is concerned, the talking head in Sports Illustrated went on to say ‘if
you only sleep five to six hours per night (Guilty!)
a two to three hour-snooze in the afternoon could be your savior.’
Say
no more, talking head: I’m buying what you’re selling. I love naps.
Let’s
just hope my boss and wife feel the same way.
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