What is it about not getting enough sleep that makes you all sideways and incoherent? I remember when I was in high school and I could recover from anything by taking a shower. I could get hit by a bus, crawl off to the side of the road and rest for a few minutes, walk home and be fine the next day. Not getting enough sleep was never an issue. I’d just catch up on it another time. I could still function.

My sleep pattern (using the loosest definition of the word “pattern”) has been erratic lately. I’m not sure what’s going on, but in the middle of the night when I start thinking about it the diagnosis is never good. I saw a show on Discovery about a dude who somehow lost the ability to sleep, and it finally drove him insane and killed him after six years. Last night I managed to convince myself that I had the second known case of that disease, even though I did sleep about three hours. Finally, at three a.m., I got out of bed and decided to study FAA regulations for a test I have to take next week. Surely that will put me to sleep. An hour later, I found myself still at it and decided to go to work.

Getting to work at 4:45 in the morning really makes the day seem longer. I look like a cartoon of a tired guy, and have been walking around with a confused look on my face since about 9 this morning. I went to get lunch, and stood on the curb scratching my beard while I waited for the light to change. It hit me not only how tired I am, but how tired I look. Scratching my face. Only really tired people do that. We also squint even though it’s not that bright outside. The three day beard growth and a staggering tired guy walk made the whole ensemble work for me. The light turned green, and a guy in a car actually had to prompt me to walk across the street so he could turn left. Stupid non-thinking mistakes are a wonderful part of fatigue. Usually, when I do something dumb in public it is on purpose. If I’m walking along and everyone looks a little too somber, I’ll fall down or hit my head on something. Or maybe just scream the lyrics to a Bon Jovi song. Sometimes people will turn away as if they are ashamed to be laughing at such misfortune and mental deficiency. If they do that, you are an amateur. If they point and laugh openly, you did it right. The point is, when I run into something on a good day or on purpose, I can think fast enough to recover. Not today. I opened the door of the sandwich shoppe (they spelled it all fancy because everyone who works there is gay and they charge $12 for a sandwich) and hit myself in the face with it. It really hurt, too, since I wasn’t prepared. Not caring or thinking about how to recover, but I did a kind of open handed disciplinary slap to the door as if to teach it a lesson. My eyes were watering from the pain, so I turned and knocked over a chair. I went ahead and sat down to read the menu, fearing what chaos might ensue from such a simple task. A guy and his girlfriend were snickering to my right, acting like I’d never know that what I just did was hilarious to a bystander. I told them to feel free to laugh openly because it is healthy, and I’d laugh at them if they had done the same thing. They were happy to oblige.

It took me about ten minutes to process the information on the menu and order a crazy ham porke sandwiche or whatever. Oh, yeah. And I’ll take one of those fancy bottles of water…and…umm..no onions. The dude (?) behind the counter said, “Onions don’t come in the water”. He said it to be funny, and I know that it was a totally stupid joke that I wouldn’t have laughed at on any other day and probably would have been able to top with an even more ridiculous comment, but I laughed way harder than necessary. Weird things are funny to me when I’m tired, and at that moment, I could imagine nothing more silly than a bottle of water with bits of onion floating in it. Whew. Now THAT’s comedy. The guy sitting with his ladyfriend seemed convinced that I was stoned, and I can totally understand why. The guy who took my order had already told me my total at least twice and waited patiently for me to fork over $63.28 or some inflated amount. I’m pretty sure I paid, and he had to ask me three times if it was for here or to go. I heard what he was saying, understood the words, but some crucial synapse wasn’t firing at that moment and I stood there like a public toilet and stared at him. I was glad to get out of there, and luckily the door had learned its lesson after the spanking and did not try to assault me again (I made a show of being very careful opening it, though). I had minimal trouble negotiating the two blocks back to work, and caught a glimpse of myself in the window. Apparently a person’s hair gets tired just like the rest of his body. My hair looks like it is very comfortable right now and basically not interested in staying where I think it should be. The unshaven look doesn’t suit me, and when I leave today I will have to drive 45 minutes to get to my bed, where I will lie awake and worry about The fact that I forgot to let someone know that I moved, and they’ll be sending my bills to my other house, and I’ll never get them, and then they’ll sue me, and I’ll be in jail being gang raped by 13 mexicans…blah blah blah. I’ll just sit down, scratch my face a little, and enjoy my sandwi-

Hey, look. They put onions on it. Anybody want a twelve dollar sandwich?

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