The Pun Also Rises

"Don't Let The Bedbugs Bite"

   I am not very good at sleeping. Never have been. It's not like I haven't had lots and lots of practice, but in spite of that, sleeping is not something I do well. When people ask me, "Did you sleep well?", I reply, "No, I made a lot of mistakes. I can tell because even though I slept for many hours, I'm still tired when I wake up."

   Honestly, if I was sleeping well, I wouldn't still need more sleep. But I do; I wake up at noon, and still want to go back to bed. I wish they had a sleep class where they would teach you how to sleep. I can imagine it now; it would be just like high school, except this time I'd be yelled at for not sleeping through class.

   Sadly, we don't have a sleep class. (Note to MCLA: Please consider this for next year's course catalog.) The closest thing we've got is sleep advice, which is when people tell you something to "help" you sleep. And I put "help" in quotation marks because when you tell me, "Sleep tight, don't let the bedbugs bite," I don't consider that helpful. That's similar to a doctor telling you, "I want you to relax, and try not to worry about the giant needle I'm about to jab you with because it's going to hurt a whole lot."

   Although come to think of it, it would be a refreshing change of pace if doctors actually admitted that what they were about to do to you was going to hurt. Because to me, the quintessential doctor visit consists of a man saying "This won't hurt a bit," and then jabbing you with the Seattle Space Needle to remove four gallons of blood.

   Now I don't mean to start any rumors, but it has begun to occur to me that doctors may actually be vampires. Think about it - you only see them indoors during the daytime, never out in the sunlight. They wear a mirror on their forehead sometimes, but it's pointed away from them, because they wouldn't reflect in it if it was pointed towards them. When's the last time you saw any wooden stakes or garlic in a doctor's office, I ask you? And of course, like all vampires, they're trying to take your blood.

   I know, I know, my parents always told me that doctors wanted my blood just because they were testing it for something. Well, they're not fooling me. I used to always insist on testing the ingredients for any cookies my mother was making, and testing all of the cookie dough, and then testing the cookies as soon as they came out of the oven, and then testing them again before serving them to any guests. And so I know that "testing" is code for "want to eat but aren't supposed to," since I loved testing cookies. So doctors are testing my blood? No thanks, Dracula M.D.

   Besides, I feel like I should try to retain as much of my blood as possible. If you could divide the world into two categories, 1) Things you need the right amount of, and 2) Things you just need enough of, I feel that blood would fall in the second category. Heat falls in the first category, because we hear about people dying from not having enough heat, and from having too much heat. On the other hand, we sometimes hear about people dying from blood loss, but when's the last time you heard about someone dying because they had too much blood?

   All of this points to a reasonable conclusion: Blood is good. More blood is more good. The only time you want less blood is if you're trying to get more bang for your buck with alcohol. I'm led to believe that if you drink after giving blood, the effect on you is very powerful. Although this leads me to wonder, would giving blood be a good way to pass out, and hence fall asleep? Maybe that's why all the doctors' offices have beds in them. I may have misjudged the medical profession; I'm sure they just want to help you rest peacefully.

   So sleep tight. And don't let the doctors bite.

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Seth Brown is a local humor writer who needs some sleep classes. He appears frequently in the Washington Post's Style Invitational, infrequently in various other publications, and once in book form -- in his first book "Think You're The Only One?", published by Barnes & Noble. His Web site is www.RisingPun.com

All work on this page is copyright Seth Brown. If you are sharing it, please give attribution. If you want to reprint it, please contact me first.