Hypothetical Insomnia

Imagine that you are a college student living on campus. As such, you share a single room (see: dorm) with another college student called a Roommate. Because you are not mice, neither you nor Roommate has the ability to collapse your spine. Your space is therefore rather limited.

Imagine that one day, Roommate informs you that she has company coming for the weekend. She does not even keep up the pretense of asking you, despite the facts that you pay the same high rent as she does and that, of course, you would have given your permission for the company to come whether or not you wanted it. Imagine that Roommate informs you of this development the day before said company is to arrive.

You don’t complain. It’s prudent to choose your battles when your combined living space is slightly larger than the average walk-in closet. Roommate’s company arrives on, let’s say, Friday afternoon, and they go out.

Friday afternoon turns golden and becomes Friday evening, which darkens gradually into Friday night. There is still no sign of Roommate. You find things to do around the room -- tidying up, reading, watching some bad made-for-television movies -- in the hope that they will return before you retire.

No such luck. At about twelve thirty, you’re too tired to wait up. You climb into bed, turn the lights out as a signal to Roommate that maybe someone is sleeping in the room, and doze off.

Roommate and the company come in at quarter till two. They turn on the light over the sink, which is incidentally level with your face, seeming unaware of the string of Christmas lights that is there for such a purpose. They turn the sink on full-blast for longer than is necessary to rinse a toothbrush. They bang around. It is nearly half an hour before they wind down. You know because you’re staring at the clock with an angry, squinty eye for pretty much the whole time.

At last the light is turned out, the banging is replaced by squeaking mattress springs, and the room becomes still. You lie there, frustratingly awake, for what seems like several years. Eventually your eyelids slip down and you relax, ill will forgotten, as sleep approaches a second time.

Right about then, the snoring begins.

Your family is full of snorers. You know all the tricks for sleeping with a snorer... but there are some complications. Your iPod is dead. You don’t have any earplugs. You’re not sick enough to justify wasting a dose of the expensive Nyquil. You burrow, pile, and otherwise create a cave out of all available bedding, but it’s no use. Still you can hear it, rhythmic and piercing. Maddening. It sounds something like a tiny elephant and something like a muted trumpet.

Things that cross your mind while you’re in the cave:

• DiCaprio has aged a lot since Titanic.
• “Little Bitty Pretty One” is an inappropriate song for this situation.
• Maybe it’s not really four.
• Ellen Page has nice hair.
• What would happen if you got up and turned on all the lights?
• Do you still have that noisemaker from Sofi’s birthday?
• Can you cry sanctuary at a place that isn’t a cathedral?
• Oh, heck. It really is four.
• The pillows aren't helping.

At about four thirty, something inside you snaps. You snatch up a pillow and blanket, grope around for your room key and house shoes, and make for the door. The lights in the hallway are retina-burning. It feels surreal and a little eerie to be out there at such an hour, when even the hardiest party people have called it a night. The floor seems to tilt. You consider the study room, but its foremost wall is glass, and you've no desire to be a zoo animal. The lounge by the laundry room makes weird gurgling sounds. Finally, exhausted and angry, you settle for the lounge behind the hall kitchen.

The kitchen lounge has one small couch, but it’s over by the glass wall, and you’re not sure you have the energy to drag it. Instead, you kick/scoot two small chairs into the one corner without windows and ball yourself up between them.

Sleep eludes you. In your state of late-night paranoia, it seems very likely that the desk person downstairs will have seen you on the security camera and will come up to tell you off. It seems equally likely that the creepy boy from the main hall will come in and creep on you while you’re sleeping. You quickly retract your foot, which could be visible from the nearest window, and spend the next three hours in a fetal position, sleeping fitfully and jumping at small noises. When the horizon turns pink around seven, you return to the room for more fitful sleeping, which, in about two hours, will be interrupted by the same sounds as last night, but in reverse.

Yeah, this really happened. I spent my last Friday as a teenager lurking around the building in search of a place to sleep. Oh well. I figure it's probably a useful skill for someone who plans to graduate with a liberal arts degree... and I never have been camping.