Misplaced Sleep

It's hard to remember life before middle school. But I remember this one from preschool:

Back in the day, we had these things called Afternoon Naps. The Teachers would lock themselves and us in the Sleeping Room. Then we'd unpack these metal cots and cover up with blankets that we brought from home, complete with teddy bear and Superman designs. When we were all tucked in, the Teachers would shoot out the lights. It used to take them quite a while before they discovered the light switch, because in case you've never rolled your eyes up while the teacher rambles on about trivial and boring things that we would never need later in life, classrooms have a lot of lights. When we were in complete darkness, they'd don their night vision goggles and patrol the room wearing black ninja suits. It wasn't good for someone to be caught awake by our captors.



Being hyper little Energizer bunnies, of course we wouldn't, couldn't sleep. We'd lie, quite uncomfortably, staring at who ever happened to be beside us. When the footsteps belonging to the Teachers came by, we'd squeeze our eyes shut and hoped the Teachers were gullible enough to be fooled by our pretend-sleep: they usually were and we prided ourselves on our acting skills.

If someone needed to go to the restroom, we'd all strain to see through the dark who needed to do their business, only to squeeze them shut as our eyes constricted to the sudden flooding of light through the gateway between unconsciousness and consciousness. Every once in a while, something stupid like a fart or some actually sleeping kid instantly awakening from an unexpected fall to the ground would evoke giggles that spread contagiously throughout the room until the Teachers came and told us to be quiet.

Finally, Afternoon Nap time was over. The light would come on, and we'd all pretend to be extremely annoyed by the rude awakening. We'd grumble, yawn, and rub our eyes. Afterwards, we'd "sleepily" put away all the beds and blankets and return to our classrooms. While we were taking our lessons, then we would finally sleep.

Looking back upon those preschool days, I laugh at the futile efforts of the Teachers to make us sleep. There's all this talk about sleeping for little kids, but it doesn't make sense. If we needed it, then we would sleep. Simple as that. It's a waste of time. We're young, and the world is wide. There's so much more to see than just the back of our eyelids.

I'm sure that they had good intentions for making us sleep. But if we could take all that time when we didn't need it and used it now, in high school. Everything must be balanced (except for fun). We can't have a sleep heavy part of our lives and then all of a sudden no sleep part of life. Then the universe will be thrown into chaos and we'll grow old, get stressed out, and have eye bags.