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It’s time to wake up and go to sleep

I have never understood the logic of waking someone up to go to sleep.

And yet that’s been happening to me most of my life.

Think about it. You’re snoozing comfortably, deep in REM sleep, be it in a chair, in a recliner or sprawled out on a couch.

You’re snuggling under the warmth of that favorite blanket or throw or afghan. Maybe snoring a little bit – or a lot. Maybe drooling a little bit, too, or a lot. Whatever.

The bottom line – you’re definitely a happy camper, content in the slumber zone that you’re visiting.

Then suddenly, you have this sensation of a disturbance occurring.

Someone is tapping your shoulder.

Something is patting your cheek.

Someone is yanking your arm.

There is a foreboding sense that you’re about to be doing something that you’d rather not.

Then it happens – you hear two words, two unwelcomed words.

“Wake up,” the sound of an insistent voice ultimately makes the message-received connection with your brain.

Up go the eyelids.

If you are me awakened from sleep, you are not especially pleased at the unsolicited re-entry into reality.

And you’re a little confused, too. Huh? What? Where am I? What day is it?

Then comes the ironic command: “Wake up and go to bed.”

Translated it means wake up and go to sleep, which begs the response: Why?

I’ve done some of my best adult sleeping upright in a recliner or curled up on the living room couch, and Better Half has faithfully been there at some point in the evening to tap my shoulder, pat my cheek or yank my arm and sweetly suggest that I wake up and go to sleep somewhere else, so I’ll be more comfortable.

Hmmm. Could have sworn I already was.

I typically grumble and comply in the process, but I have had my moments of rebellion.

In my youth, especially, I would enjoy falling asleep on the rec room floor of the family homestead, dozing off on a giant bean-bag type pillow.

My mother would yell at me with deft ears to wake up and go to bed.

She’d even give me a lame reason why I should.

“Go to bed,” she’d bark. “Your father has to get up in the morning.”

I would wonder why dad couldn’t just go to sleep himself – a thought that would stick with me as I dozed back off on the floor.

When I got my first apartment, I was gleefully defiant. With no one but a cat around, I was at liberty to couch snooze at my leisure for the duration.

Ahh, yes. Uninterrupted sleeping freedom.

Here’s hoping you have a week of sweet dreams – wherever you’re snoozing.

(Kiaski, a resident of Steubenville, is a staff columnist and features writer for the Herald-Star and The Weirton Daily Times and community editor of the Herald-Star. She can be contacted at jkiaski@heraldstaronline.com.)

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