To Sleep, Perchance to Dream
By Dixie Darr
"If you want to be full of joy you will need to slow down. You will have to sleep more, play more and spend time with your loved ones. You may have to settle for fewer stimulating and exciting activities and rediscover the elementary pleasure of boredom and the delight of simple things." Archibald Hart
A couple of days ago I woke up in the middle of the night and couldn't get back to sleep because I was trying desperately to remember the names of all seven dwarfs, then all eight of Santa's reindeer. Of course, I could remember only six of one and seven of the other. Now is that a stupid thing to keep you awake, or what?
Apparently it doesn’t take much to rob us of our sleep because scientists are calling Americans the most sleep-deprived people on the face of the earth. Some researchers believe lack of sleep may be our number one health problem, indicating links to the Challenger disaster, the Chernobyl nuclear reactor meltdown and the Exxon Valdez oil spill.
For some reason, we think it's admirable to skimp on sleep. Dr. James Maas, a sleep researcher at Cornell University, says, "We have a lot of macho people saying, 'Oh, I get by on 6 or 7' (hours), but they are getting by; they are no where near their peak performance. As a rule of thumb, most of us would increase our productivity by at least 25%, and certainly our mood, if we got one more hour of sleep."
Eventually, the dwarfs and reindeer came to me and I was able to get back to sleep. See if you can name them before you read any further. For the record, and so you will have one less reason to stay awake nights, here they are: Happy, Dopey, Sleepy, Sneezy, Grumpy, Bashful, Doc and Dasher, Dancer, Prancer, Vixen, Comet, Cupid, Donner, Blitzen.
Now we can all rest easy.
9:12:01 AM 
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