I confess. I did it.
Before you judge me too harshly, you need to understand something about me. I need my sleep.
I’ve always had a strange relationship with sleep. On one hand, I appreciate it. On the other, I resent it a little. I’ve often done the math: if I live to be 90 years old, roughly 30 of those years will have been spent asleep. Thirty years! God gives us this incredible gift called life… and then quietly places an asterisk beside it. Some restrictions apply. One-third must be spent unconscious.
Still, I’ve tried to do the responsible thing and get my recommended seven or eight hours. That hasn’t always been possible. When you’re raising a family, working multiple jobs, and trying to claw your way through school, sleep tends to fall lower on the priority list.
Dawn figured out early in our marriage that a sleep-deprived Marty can become… unusual. One night, only a year or two after we were married, we were drifting off to sleep when I suddenly began singing in my sleep.
“It’s a beautiful day in the neighborhood, a beautiful day in this…”
Dawn sat up and said loudly, “What?”
Still asleep, I answered with conviction:
“Mr. Rogers!”
Apparently that was enough to wake me to the sound of my wife laughing. Forty years later, she still has a laugh about this.
But the real story happened in the winter of 1991.
Dawn was pregnant with Milo. Brittany and Destiny were still little. I was going to school during the day and working third shift at night. I existed in a fog of hot chocolate, responsibility, and exhaustion.
The girls had a hamster named Noah. His cage was affectionately called “the ark.” Noah, however, was not content to remain in the ark. He was an escape artist of legendary ability. To this day we never figured out how this Houdini did it. But once free, he behaved like he had a built-in compass that always pointed north… straight toward our bedroom.
Right toward the sleep-deprived man.
One winter night, Dawn and I had finally crawled into bed, desperate for rest, when we heard the familiar scratching under the bed.
Scritch… scritch… scritch… it was Noah!
We got up, retrieved him, and placed him carefully back into his ark. We made absolutely sure the lid was secure. Problem solved.
A few minutes later, just as we were drifting back to sleep…
Scritch… scritch… scritch… Under the bed again. At this point I was beginning to suspect the hamster had a death wish. Still, we tried again. This time we added reinforcements. We stacked several heavy books on top of the plastic cage lid. No rodent could escape this prison.
Finally, I fell asleep. But, about an hour later…
Scurry. Scratch. Tiny feet. He was back!
Something inside me snapped.
Sleep deprivation can push a person to dark places. Philosophers have debated the nature of evil for centuries, but I am convinced that at least some of it can be traced directly to lack of sleep.
In a moment of complete madness, I picked up that little furball, walked to the front door, and threw him out into the snowy winter night.
Then I went back to bed. And yes, I slept. But guilt has a way of visiting your dreams.
The next morning I woke up, immediately realizing what I had done. I went outside searching for Noah, hoping against hope that perhaps he had survived his midnight flight into the snow. But Noah was nowhere to be found.
And so, I confess. To my readers… and to Noah. I was temporarily insane due to sleep deprivation. Yet I have carried the memory of that winter night with me for more than thirty-five years. A man never forgets the moment he crosses the line from responsible father to rodent assassin.
If there is a moral to this story, it might be this: Sleep is not optional.
And if you happen to own a hamster that knows how to escape its cage… make absolutely sure that cage is secure. Because somewhere out there, in the cold Kentucky night, Noah still haunts my conscience.
And if hamsters have a heaven, I suspect there’s a tiny one up there telling the story of the night a very tired man lost his freaking mind.
Dr. Wesley