Go Gently Into Sleep

No wonder America's progress lags so far behind the advances of other nations. The Americans are sleeping!

Betcha don't remember Thomas Edison, eh? But if you did, you'd remember that his sleeping habits were a bit strange. Of course, back in his era, a day contained 24 hours!

And Edison slept 4 or less of those hours; worked the rest.

Had a mission, Edison did. Wanted to invent all those gadgets which positively, without a doubt, enriched folk's lives. Like the light bulb, the microphone, phonograph, generators, electric trains, typewriters, the stock ticker, the transmitter for the telephone receiver, the video camera and the first commercial electric light and power system.

Yep! Edison's real challenge was not: how to get to sleep, but: how to stay awake!

Now if you believe the newspapers, in 2005, at least 42 million folks, here in the U.S., were walking around like zombies.

Taking sleeping pills, they were, and popping those babies like never before so they could catch a few Z's.

Oh yeah, sure, it was harmless stuff like Ambien, Lunesta and Sonata. Not heavy drugs or anything like that !!! Just over-the-counter stuff. Or by prescription. From the two-hundred-and-thirteen thousand doctors who wrote 3.3 million dollar's worth of sleeping pill prescriptions for last year.

Which is OK, right?

Now, I wantcha to know those 42 million Americans aren't stingy. They shared those sleeping pills with their kids! Because those children's lives are so stress-filled that they can't sleep!

Life is hard. I mean, the finger exercises, alone, are killing us.

It takes excruciating effort to wrestle with a water faucet, knuckle toaster levers into position, twist electric stove knobs from off to high, poke blender buttons, turn car and truck ignition switches, tap computor keys, jerk the heat and air-conditioning thermostats up a notch, flip ipods open, nudge their selectors, punch the microwave selection pads, push buttons on the TV remote, heft a cell phone, dial the numbers, and punch the kill-those-bloody-villains indicators on video games.

Darn if our fingers aren't just plum tuckered out at night. But they can't sleep till the rest of the body does, so pop a pill, quiet the unexercised mind, dull the nerves in that really stress-torn body and let THOSE fingers sleep!

Now, as IN-DE-PEN-DENT Americans, we have a duty to support the pharmaceutical companies, don't we? If we let our minds use those sleepless hours to compose a sonata, paint a masterpiece, write a novel, invent a few gadgets, sketch a Muslim cartoon . . . .

Heck. If we did that those old drug companies would lose billions of dollars. Guess we can't let that happen, huh?

Well folks, since the pharmaceutical companies have spent all that money ($590 million) advertising their Z drugs, guess it would behoove me to watch an ad or two. Shouldn't be hard to find one. Turn the TV on and there will be 3 per hour.

My favorite is the Lunesta luna moth gliding euphorically on the summer's breeze which wafts around the sleeper's bed.

Puts me to sleep every time I watch it.
Go Gently Into Sleep © 2006 Chaeli Lee Sullivan