Does “For Better or For Worse” Include Sleeping with a Howler Monkey?

A report out of the University of California, Irvine claims upwards of 50-percent of the U.S. population snores at one time or another. Scientists in the school’s Department of Otolaryngology categorize snoring according to, among other things, volume. “Significant” snoring, which the recent study also calls “heroic,” is defined as snoring that can be heard “more than two bedrooms away.”

Yankee sleepers are not alone. According to the BBC, three-quarters of Brits are afflicted by the habit. A Travelodge study there revealed much more about snoring than amplification. Many locals revealed that their snores repelled potential partners, amorous advances, and even the lewdly delightful booty call.

Snoring can be so damaging to relationships that in 1971 it was declared legal grounds for divorce. While not an ideal solution to the problem, it is agreeably much better than the plan that includes homicide. Unfortunately history is full people who’ve made both choices.

I’m Not a Bad Person
I Just Snore

My dear, sweet grandmother – God rest her soul — lied to me about two things in her life that were both pointless and pathetically obvious. These were, to the best of my knowledge, the only times she chose to twist the truth. For what reason she veiled these indulgences, I’ll never know. She believed, incorrectly of course, that she took the secrets to her grave.

Oma (German for granny) told me that she never ate sweets and that she never, ever snored.

Hell, I didn’t care that she lied – I was impressed that at 94 she was still trying to pull a con on me. Or did I care that she at sweets like an Oompa-Loompa. She hoarded pounds of German candy and cookies in secret stockpiles throughout her home – in hat boxes, the clothes-pin bag inside the dryer, the bathroom vanity behind the toilet cleaner, in a box named “special Christmas ornaments” – and my personal favorite – her winter boots. Maybe such subterfuge got her through hard times – like World Wars and Depressions. I had to hand it to her; she was one wily old broad.

What pissed me off, though, was that she snored like a jackhammer.

The woman could sleep anytime and anyplace and often times did – watching television, driving in the car (as a passenger — thank God), sitting in a doctor’s waiting room, at the dining room table. And she snored every time she shut her eyes. It was critical – if you had any chance at all of getting a night’s rest – you fell asleep before Oma. If you didn’t completely crash before she shut her eyes – forget it. There was no drifting off to the land of sugar plums once the chain saw started.

Come morning, she’d likely complain of a dry mouth. D’uh. She’d practically inhale the contents of her bedroom through her enormous fly trap – curtains, quilt, dog, underwear drawer. She kept a glass of water on her nightstand and a tin of licorice she bought at the German import store to keep her mouth moist. I despised those licorice bits, those diamond-shaped specs of poison disguised as throat lozenges. They provided no relief from my own parched nightmare. With the thermostat was set at 87-degrees and not a dram of humidity in sight, what we really needed was an open fire hydrant.

Let’s Just Sleep On It
Snoring is the worst. It was the subject of vicious fights between my mother and dad when I was a tot. It was the reason given to me and my sister for their move to separate bedrooms when I was in sixth grade. I would have believed that, except that the walls that separated the bedrooms in our home were constructed of sheetrock, not lead. When one of them started snoring you could have moved to a different continent and it wouldn’t have mattered.

As with every other negative trait that my blood relatives could pass along to me, I inherited snoring. Let’s see, that makes an attractive list of drug addiction, alcoholism, heart disease, bad sinuses, a marginal IQ, and cellulite. Beautiful.

Although I’ve been hexed with the snoring gene, I’ve been blessed with what I’ve come to know as a real gift. I sleep like a corpse. Once I’m down – I’m down for the count. My best friend calls it the “sleep of the dead.” Nothing can raise me. The list of things I’ve slept through is long and impressive and includes a tree falling on the house – the branches actually poked through the roof and nearly scratched my nose; the dog vomiting on me in bed; an aborted plane trip to New York — I awoke as we were taxiing back to the gate in Detroit thinking we had just landed in LaGuardia – and a endless string of thunderstorms, neighborhood parties, rock concerts, movies – you get my drift. I’d like to put sleep down on my resume – it truly is the one thing I’m good at.

Recently I’ve been suffering a mild bout of insomnia. Insomnia for me is being awake longer than 12 consecutive hours. While I consider my ability to sleep a cherished gift, some say I sleep too much. Who’s to say, really? They start with their, “You’re sleeping your life away,” or the, “There’s plenty of time to sleep when you’re dead,” speeches. I’m not a fucking farmer. In fact, sleep is the single criteria on which I chose my current profession. I went to the Michigan Employment Security Commission office to find out what career best suited me. The test showed that the three jobs that matched my personality type – aka allowed for the most shut eye — were assembly line worker, bus driver and writer. Writer also allowed me to work in my pajamas – the choice was easy.

Until they start a 12-step program for people who sleep too much, I’m sticking with my sleep schedule. That schedule includes an early morning wake up of 9:30 sharp, followed by a mid-morning nap, an after-lunch nap and – if I’m feeling particularly cozy – a cat-nap before dinner. But after 6:00 p.m., I swear off sleep until I turn in at around nine – or I find it ruins my ability to sleep through the night. I figure I’ll fit perfectly into an assisted living facility in four or five years, if I can hold out that long.

Not only do I come from a napping, snoring and lying lineage, we are all most unattractive under the influence of sleep. We’d find my grandmother passed out on her unbelievably comfortable couch, snoring to beat the band, with cookie crumbs on her face and a thick stream of powder-sugar saliva running down her chin. What a beautiful angel.

My dad’s move was the herky jerk – a frantic nap dance that set off a chain of unpleasant actions. Open mouthed and snoring, he’d thrash about his Lay-Z-Boy chair in a series of spasmodic movements, frightening my mom’s neurotic Yorkie into an irrepressible barking jag, which startled him back awake and mad as hell. After the dog died, we found out my dad could actually wake himself up with his sonic snores. After his snores passed about an 8.2 on the Richter scale, his head would snap to attention, eyes wide and scanning the room to see who was making all the racket.

Dad could stay awake through hours and hours of old war moves, boring documentaries and football games sent into endless overtimes, but he would fall asleep just at the climax. A kicker sent onto the field with 00:03 left in a tied game, or Indiana Jones staring down the barrel of some Nazi’s gun, was my dad’s cue to conk out. Poor guy never saw a single coach doused with Gatorade or Indy’s whip crack him to freedom – never mind the final Oscar presentation.

My big annoying habit was my Olympic-caliber drooling. Mom would practically suffocate me in a kitchen towel to save her precious couch, which was already covered in plastic, from becoming a Slip ‘n Slide.

My mom, on the other hand, was a complete car crash. Like her mother, my mother denied napping – even if caught in the act. Her deal was sleeping on the couch after supper with that little six-pound rat dog curled up in her face. There were times I thought she’d blow and (alternately) suck that dog right up her nose – which to be fair – is quite a honker. (As an aside, why is it that your nose continues to grow as you age? What was Darwin’s theory on that? Doesn’t it seem more logical for the brain to expand as the sense of smell begins to atrophy, instead of the other way around? Perhaps we’re evolving into a super race of homo-sapien bloodhounds.)

There’s a Clinic for That?
My partner of nearly four years actually sent me to a sleep clinic over this whole snoring deal. While not an MD or even a DO, she diagnosed me with sleep apnea. She reported that not only did I snore at record volumes; I performed some grotesque theatre of sucking in large gasps of air, and then holding my breath like Shelly Winters in the original Poseidon Adventure. This she found unsettling; she did not want a corpse in her bed, especially given her hectic work schedule.

The non-surgical cure for sleep apnea is wearing a CPAP machine at night to increase air pressure in your throat. Great, but it looks like something Tom Cruise wore in Top Gun. Add to that some Breathe Right nasal strips and a big plastic mouth guard to keep me from grinding my teeth and it’s like sharing the bed with Hannibal Lecter.

Why is it that light sleepers always end up in relationships with people who can sleep through a rocket launch? Sleep habits should be something you find out about each other before the first date ever happens. There should be a brief questionnaire your fill out on line with maybe a half-dozen questions that include sleep habits, tolerance for pet hair, whether or not you eat sausage – important stuff like that. Makes things easier down the road.

Heavy sleepers are like alcoholics – we think everybody sleeps like us. We don’t give a shit how our snoring, thrashing, cover stealing and bed hogging affects other people. Light sleepers are the Al-Anons of the bedroom. They wallow in their resentment, while secretly wanting to be exactly like us. My light-sleeping partner is cursed to hear sounds as inaudible as a Hummingbird feather hitting a cotton ball. Which is funny, because she often times claims not to have heard me asking her for cash or to bring home a pizza. Curious.

She’ll ask me, come morning, “Did you hear the (storm, barking dog, telephone, fireworks, car alarm, gun shots)?” And I’ll sheepishly answer, “Sorry, no.” But I’m not sorry. What moron is sorry for a great night’s sleep? My best friend, who also suffers from light-sleeper syndrome, is constantly experiencing some type of sleep disorder. She’s always trying some new homeopathic remedy – soy milk, a ban on caffeine, a variety of herbal teas, B vitamins, bath salts, zinc, sulphur and ignatia. Nothing works, not even a 3:00 a.m. dose of Lifetime television for women.

How do people stay in relationships when culture dictates they share a bed? It is a never-ending process of negotiations: turn the thermostat up, turn it back down; windows open, shut the blinds; pets in, pets out; television or not; cuddling; personal hygiene; real estate; nudity? It’s hosting the mid-East peace talks just to find some middle ground. Why can’t there be sleep-number mattress for every bedroom issue. You have your dial, I’ll have mine. We can each tune into the individual settings that result in a perfect night’s sleep. I think my setting is called, “Somewhere in space where no one can hear me snore.”

The same suffering best friend admits to being neither a morning nor a night person. She peaks for about 20 minutes somewhere between three and 4:30 p.m. I find that true as well. I’ve had jobs that required me to work at all times of the day and night – I never found my sweet spot. I’ve worked as a morning news anchor, graveyards at a radio station in Ann Arbor, days and afternoons at various gigs. As my personnel files document, I’ve been late for them all.

You Napper You
My partner has a very Puritan view of napping. I, on the other hand, have a very “Big 10” view of napping. Growing up, her family frowned on such waste and sloth — naps were strictly forbidden. They were above the need to re-energize their mid-afternoon batteries. While our family may have talked the same game – we did the exact opposite.

To me, there is absolutely nothing better than a nap. I majored in napping. I remember my best college naps – Sunday afternoons after an enormous brunch of carbohydrates and marijuana I’d drift off into listless bliss in some roommate’s upper bunk. Those were the best of the times. In the absence of dope, my naps today include at least one pet. Our pets always oblige – they must be from my side of the family.

Keeping the family tradition alive, I inherited my Oma’s sinfully sublime couch after she passed. Reupholstered, it’s even better than it was some 25 years ago. At nine feet in length, it can hold one, sometimes two dogs and a passel of cats. We sneak in our naps while my partner is at work, away from her critical glares.

Call it karma, but two of our dogs — the two Chow mixes – snore like hell and at the drop of a hat. One minute they’re scouring the kitchen looking for bits of food that may have landed on the floor, the next they’re in canine comas. They slobber, drool, and do all the comedic cartoon movements dogs do in their sleep. Paw pads twitching, they growl and snarl like real hunters, in hot pursuit of bunnies or squirrels. In their dreams, they are Balto and Lassie and Rin Tin Tin.

I’m so happy they snore. That makes two more on my side.

By Charlotte Fisher Copyright 2010 MyWord LLC