This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2015, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
Editor's note: Robert Kirby is on vacation. This is a reprint of an earlier column.
Ever have one of those nights when you just can't sleep? You wake up at 2 a.m. and nothing short of hitting yourself on the head with a mallet will let you get back to sleep.
I'm having one right now. My grandmother used to say that sleeplessness was heaven's way of telling you that there were unresolved issues in your life. According to her, God woke you up because late at night when it's quiet and no one is around is the best time to reflect on said things.
Since Grandma also believed that public restrooms caused warts, some doubt seems called for. Personally, I think God's above that sort of thing. When it comes to getting the attention of an idiot, I see him as more of a flaming sword, big flood, leprosy kind of a god.
Whenever something troubles me in the middle of the night, it's either the quart of green olives I ate three hours before, a strange noise heard by my wife or the dog frantically needing to whiz. Past experience has taught me that these are not to be ignored.
As I've gotten older, I've learned not to eat certain things shortly before bed. Pizza heads the list, but it also contains such items as pastrami, cookie dough, uncooked pork, pickled eggs and extremely old military rations.
Noise doesn't bother me much when I'm trying to sleep — unless my wife hears it. A strange noise heard by a woman always constitutes a no-further-sleep-allowed emergency on the part of the man next to her.
It doesn't have to be a big noise either. If someone slams a car door in Boise, my wife will swear that it's a burglar ransacking our kitchen. Back when I still believed in chivalry, I used to check these noises out. Not anymore.
One night, after my wife convinced me that Charles Manson was rummaging through the china hutch, I went to investigate with a club.
When the cat who was hiding in the sink popped up, I thought it was Nosferatu. Said conclusion was immediately followed by a frantic swinging of the club, acute bladder failure in both the cat and myself, and the need for a new microwave, toaster and counter top.
That's not to say that you can't reflect on life once you're awake and can't get back to sleep. I do it all the time. For example, if I have to get up to let the dog out, I always reflect on "how'd we end up with this mangy bag of #@*! anyway?"
None of this happened to me when I was a kid. Back then I always slept like a stun-gunned drunk. Except, of course, for Christmas Eve. Nothing weighs heavier on a 9-year-old than the issue of naughty and nice four hours before the jury comes in.
Sleep probably started coming harder when I actually had some crimes to worry about, or about the time I hit serious puberty. Few things cause more sleeplessness than the opposite sex.
If it isn't worrying about whether you will ever get to sleep with a significant other, it's worrying about whether you will ever get back to sleep again once you do.
Robert Kirby can be reached at rkirby@sltrib.com or facebook.com/stillnotpatbagley. Find his past columns at http://www.sltrib.com/lifestyle/kirby/