Sleep is for girly men

For those of you who don’t already know, this past Saturday, the Etiwanda Jazz Bands had their annual Valentine’s Dance, which is a general excuse for parents to get drunk to the dulcet accompaniment of their children’s singing and playing. The dance list comprised of general stuff: Earth Wind and Fire, YMCA, Proud Mary, etc, and I did “Mack the Knife” and “Play that Funky Music”, and also wrote out and arranged Justin Timberlake’s “Senorita,” which I did backgrounds on. Perhaps the most unnerving part of this is that my parents, always the responsible and level-headed types, opted not to drink, but to take video…and then put it on Youtube. As you can imagine, this was a great source of consternation to me and it was taken down, but should anyone want to see the video, Ill see what I can do. Onto the post:
My senior year has been a veritable comedy of disappointment, screwups, and general non-merriment, along with the occasional bright spot, most notably getting voted most likely to fall asleep in class. After only two years, I had no clue that I would make a strong presence at Etiwanda. So far, I have in music, scholarship, and all that other fluff. And yet, when my children look back and find daddy’s old high school yearbooks in the attic, they will see that his peers saw him notable, not for his wit, candor, charm, poise, and general voluptuousness, but rather for his inability to keep awake in class. Now, the TASP likes might acknowledge that this isn’t a surprise, considering that I did dose off during key moments, ie seminar, movies, lunch, in the middle of doing my essays. Yet, this occurred after long nights of nearly perverse amounts of sleep deprivation. When the school year started, I would routinely get 10 to 12 hours of sleep and still fall asleep during class (by 12 hours I mean 6 PM to 6AM, ie when I got home to when I needed to leave the next morning). My doctors suggested that I might have a potentially serious disorder called sleep apnea, where I stop breathing during sleep. And so, to find out, they sent me to a sleep clinic, which might be the single weirdest experience of my year. Now, what they normally do is glue weird little sensors of the “oooo what does this one do???” variety and let you sleep, with one catch….someone is watching you. While you sleep.....Ill stop now and let you know how awkward this may have been. In my case, a pleasant and somewhat chubby, touchy-feely man named Ernesto had the onus of watching me during my most vulnerable moments. Aside from this, my experience was exceptional because they sent me to sleep in the creepiest room they had, with a dull orange glow coming out from under the curtains. At one point, I could have sworn I saw an upside-down crucifix on the wall, but that may have been due to the lack of sleep I was experiencing, or a dream, or that the room may have been inhabited by Satan.
Whatever the case, my doctor called me in a week or so after the test to discuss my results. In his words, I have “55 percent sleep efficiency,” meaning that for every hour Im unconscious, I get roughly 30 minutes out of it. And yet, I don’t have sleep apnea, which is good. And so, he prescribed Flonase, and sent me on my way. In retrospect, I think the whole process could have been more streamlined, you know, deal away with the middleman. It’s sort of like going into the office to check for lupus, and finding out you actually need your tonsils removed. With the exception that you didn’t have to sleep in a creepy room, being monitored…probably by a spirit of Hell. Anywho. This is all for now. Here’s hoping that all of you receive an ungodly amount of booty this Valentine’s. As we all know, the TASP rule isn’t “No sex at TASP.” It’s “no sex at TASP while the factota are watching.”
XoXOx (big kiss, little hug, big kiss, big hug, little kiss), Ruben