Sleepless at the sleepover

Ah, to bed. At last. Another long day, made all the longer by a teen-age son’s sleepover party.

I can still hear the boys in there, snickering and whispering. Winding down from their video-game/sugar buzzes and the random hormone surges that make them howl and punch each other. They seemed to have a great time this evening. Eventually, they’ll fall asleep.

I lay awake, listening, and thinking how sleepover parties are different now.

When they were little, sleepovers were high adventure, full of separation anxiety, trepidation and tears. We needed mule trains to haul the emotional baggage from one household to another. Not to mention changes of clothes, special treats, a blankie, a stuffed toy and one favorite plastic action figure doomed to never turn up again.

We parents regularly delivered all this stuff to another household and handed our children over to strange adults who, for all we knew, were members of a blood cult. But, hey, it’s good for the kids to socialize. And we parents always were desperate for a night off.

Not that it’s ever the whole night off. Because the host parents call at 2 a.m., saying the visiting child is scared, sick or otherwise sleepless and needs a ride home. Guaranteed.

It gets easier in the middle-school years. The kids can pack their own bags, for one thing. And they stay busy with electronic gizmos: video games, CDs, DVDs, I-Pods, cell phones, the microwave oven. The job of the host parents becomes a long night of “Turn that off and go to bed,” but that’s better than cleaning up barf.

Now that they’re older, my boys have friends sleep over all the time, mostly so they can stay up very late on weekends, playing Guitar Hero II. These days, preparation for the sleepover is virtually zero. The guests show up without so much as a toothbrush. They eat whatever they can forage in the fridge. They sleep on the carpet like dogs, if they sleep at all. Sometimes, I wonder if their parents even know where they are. And if other homeowners regularly find unfamiliar 16-year-olds eating Cocoa Puffs in their kitchens at 3 a.m.

Our sleepover visitors always seem polite enough. Sloppy and hyperactive and endlessly hungry, but polite. Hmm. Maybe they’re covering up something with those good manners.

As I lie awake, I start thinking how I don’t really know these teen-agers that well. Maybe the good manners are a ruse. Maybe they’re really felons or firebugs. Maybe they’re “casing the joint,” trying to determine where we hide our valuables. Haha, fooled them, we don’t have any valuables. But still.

Charles Manson probably attended sleepovers at other kids’ homes. Did those host parents wonder about him? Maybe they recognized him later on the news, and said, “Look, it’s Charlie. I always knew that kid was a little helter-skelter.”

The more I think about the potential danger of teen-aged strangers in my home, the more restless I become. By the time I put on my bathrobe and tiptoe down the hall, I’m expecting to find anything, up to and including the sacrificing of a goat.

I peek into my son’s room, and the boys are sound asleep. At peace. Like angels from heaven, if angels slept on the floor and wore baggy jeans and had funny haircuts. Teen angels.

I go back to bed, smiling over my silly anxieties. And lay awake until dawn.

We walk the night

I snapped awake at 2 a.m., my parental radar fully engaged.

A light was on somewhere in the house, its glow barely reaching our bedroom. I figured one of our two teen-aged sons was: a) up in the middle of the night, possibly ill, or b) STILL up, though they’d been ordered to bed hours earlier.

I strained my ears, trying to determine if someone was prowling the kitchen and/or tossing cookies in the bathroom. Nothing.

After a few seconds, the light went off.

Ah. One of the boys was up, for whatever reason, but he’s now gone back to bed and--

The light flicked on again. I listened, waiting. Clearly, the boys were UP TO SOMETHING. But I couldn’t hear a sound.

The light went out. OK, I told myself, go back to sleep. You can deal with the kids in the morning--

The light came on.

I was getting steamed. It’s 2 a.m., and I’ve got a lot of work to do tomorrow--

The light went out. Maybe it’s not too late. Maybe I can still get back to Slumberland, so I’m not a complete wreck tomorrow.

The light came on.

I leaped from bed, slung on my bathrobe and marched down the hall, ready to read somebody the Riot Act. Only the light wasn’t coming from the boys’ bedrooms. It was coming from my office, which should’ve been uninhabited this time of night.

Yikes.

I tiptoed to the office door and peered inside. And there was my computer, chugging away, displaying its revolving slide show of screensaver art. Each frame lit up the room for a few seconds, then winked out, followed by the bright glow of the next slide.

You get the picture. The computer had been up in the night, doing routine maintenance, and was now headed toward shutdown. Satisfied, I closed the office door, went back to bed and probably got a good 20 minutes’ more sleep before dawn.

This isn’t the first time my computer’s played such a trick. Once, I was in the shower, no one else at home, when I distinctly heard a man’s voice somewhere in the house. Couldn’t make out what was being said, but it definitely was a man’s baritone.

I toweled off and sneaked around the house, ready to pounce on an intruder. Then I heard the voice again: “You’ve got mail!”

The air-conditioner roars. Clocks tick-tock. The VCR whirs. The icemaker goes bump in the night.

Our sprinklers irrigate the lawns in the pre-dawn cool, so less is wasted. They hiss and gasp, and the pipes stutter in the walls. No wonder we’re such early risers around here.

Every appliance/computer/phone/smoke alarm in the house has a red “on” light or menacing green eyes or a blue digital clock flashing “12:00.” So many colorful little lights, it’s like the bridge of the Enterprise around here. All the lights come in handy when I’m chasing phantom noises in the night. I can wander the house without flipping a light switch, navigating by the familiar beacons of our electronic gizmos.

Sometimes, lying awake, I get paranoid. Among all the whirs and clicks, I hear snickering. Not the sort of thoughts that help a person get back to sleep.

I should teach my computer to play lullabies.

Nightlife ain't no good life

For people without children, the word “nightlife” conjures images of drinking and dancing, nightclubs and roadhouses, flirtation and funk.

To parents, “nightlife” means “sleep.”

We parents remember fondly the child-free nights of our youth, when parties didn’t end until dawn. Even after we were married, we went out regularly with our spouses and/or friends to enjoy movies and dancing and candlelit dinners.

Then a baby arrived, and its cat-like mewling might as well have been the shrieking of brakes. Screeeeech, nightlife’s over.

We still were up all night, but parenthood changed everything. Instead of donning our finest threads, we changed diapers. Instead of icing down beers, we warmed up formula. Two a.m. was no longer “closing time.” It was time for a “feeding.”

Oh, we tried to have a social life. We took our offspring out in public, only to be greeted with glares when they spilled or howled or hurled silverware. We hired sitters, only to find that we were too tired to do much with our nights of freedom.

Sleep grew more valuable than a few hours’ fun. Dancing and fine dining became activities for vacations or special occasions. Even then, we might gladly swap a special night out for a full night’s sleep, depending on how much croup and colic our household suffered lately.

Take heart, parents. It gets easier. Once everybody’s sleeping through the night, you might have enough energy to go two-stepping. As the kids get older, it’s easier to find a babysitter (if no easier to pay for one). Eventually, the children are old enough to be left at home alone for a few hours.

The drawback to this progression is that, by the time parents can go out again, we have too much accumulated fatigue to enjoy it. It’s easier to stay home, watch TV, order a pizza.

When we force ourselves to venture out, we find that nightlife has passed us by. All the hot spots have changed; that favorite honky-tonk is now a vegan juice bar. Everything costs a lot more than we remember. The music is unfamiliar, and seems too loud. We’ve forgotten how to boogie. We need a refresher course in partying.

Here, then, is the Parents’ Guide to Nightlife:

• Nothing fun happens until after your usual bedtime.
  
• Nobody says “disco” anymore.
  
• When it comes to drinking, it’s important to remember that you’re older now and out of practice. If you have too many, you’ll be punished the next morning by the one-two punch of a wicked hangover and “Doodlebops” blaring from the TV.
  
• Don’t test the temperature of your drink on the inside of your wrist.
  
• “Karaoke” is Japanese for “show me the nearest exit, please.”
  
• No matter how hot it might be outside, never wear short pants to a cowboy bar.
  
• “Hip-hop” is not a character on “Sesame Street.”
  
• If you feel that people are staring at you on the dance floor, you’re probably right.
  
• It’s always wrong to tell your dinner date, “Here comes the choo-choo.”
  
• No bibs.
  
• Other adults aren’t amused when you make a bunny out of a napkin.
  
• Having a designated driver is not a license to act a fool.
  
• “Tequila” is Spanish for “regret."
  
• When your spouse says, “It’s time to go,” you should immediately stop drinking, take the necktie off your head and leave the dance floor.
  
• Let your spouse sleep late the next morning. You’ll need that quiet time to think up some apologies.
  

Murphy's Law only scratches surface

Timing is everything, and that's never clearer than when problems arise.

That's why one version of Murphy's Law says: Whatever can go wrong, will go wrong at the worst possible time.

I was reminded of this when the smoke alarms at our home announced they needed new batteries. Wait, "announced" is too polite a term. When our smoke alarms need batteries, they emit a chirp loud enough to wake everyone in a cemetery across town. The startling chirp repeats, ever more frequent and persistent, until somebody by golly replaces those batteries. Or else.

This has occurred three times in the years we've lived in this house. Each time, it's happened in the middle of the night.

Each time, I’ve had to get up, go to an all-night market, buy batteries and replace them before anyone could get back to sleep and/or my wife killed me.

Have I mentioned that our house came with six of these smoke alarms? That they're all wired together somehow, so if only one has a low battery, the others chirp in sympathy? That two of the alarms can only be reached with a ladder? That if you furiously rip one off the wall because you can't stand the noise another second, the others will chirp more?

Anyway, there I was, at 2 a.m., teetering half-asleep on a ladder, replacing batteries and pushing buttons and praying the noise would stop. And I noted once again how things always go screwy at the worst possible time.

You could argue that we bring this problem on ourselves. Clearly, we don't change the batteries frequently enough (like, say, every week). Clearly, I need to study how the smoke alarms work, at a time when I'm not also trying to sleep. At minimum, we should always keep spare batteries on hand.

But such preparation would be tempting fate. If the smoke alarms weren’t going haywire in the middle of the night, it would be something else going wrong, maybe something worse. Like a fire.

Murphy's Law doesn’t begin to cover all the possible variations of inconvenient timing. Here are some suggestions:

Bell's Law: The more important the telephone call, the more likely you'll be unable to answer it in time.

Montezuma's Law: The longer you are on vacation, the greater the chances that one of you will get sick.

Babel's Law: The farther you are from proper health care facilities, the more serious the symptoms will be.

Gates' Law: The worse your boss' mood, the more likely he'll walk up behind you while you're playing solitaire on your computer.

Eveready's Law: Your flashlight will work fine right up to the moment a storm knocks out electrical power to your house.

Heloise's Law: Surprise guests arrive only when your home is at its messiest.

Goodyear's Law: The harder it's raining, the greater your chances of getting a flat tire.

Caterpillar's Law: If you're in a hurry to get somewhere, you will encounter street construction detours. Every time.

Macy's Law: The more you want a product, the greater the odds that the store sold the last one five minutes ago.

Ditka's Law: The more your wife wants you to take her out -- right now -- the better the chances your game will go into overtime.

Brewer's Law: The later the hour, the louder the chirp.

Get it on with your mini-bar

Doesn’t it seem at times that life is a hotel room mini-bar? It rarely provides exactly what you want, the portions are too small and everything costs way too much. Plus, you must fetch your own ice.

When I travel, I almost never resort to the mini-bar. I can’t bring myself to spend $6 for a single cookie or $8 on a bottle so small that the liquor evaporates before I can get it to my lips. Besides, by the time I get to my room at night, I’m usually already well-oiled from the maxi-bar off the hotel lobby. At that point, consuming a miniature bottle of booze would be like spitting in a river.

Mini-bars are much on my mind since I saw a newspaper item about a hotel in Miami’s South Beach that offers “themed” mini-bar packages. For $50 and up, the Catalina Hotel and Beach Club will tailor mini-bar stock to fit guests’ special needs or moods.

The “Get It On” package, for example, includes champagne, whipped cream, maraschino cherries, strawberries, scented candles, edible body paint and -- this is my favorite part -- a Barry White CD. Oh, baby, baby.

(If I consumed whipped cream, maraschino cherries and strawberries, on top of champagne, I wouldn’t be considering whether to “Get It On.” I’d be worrying about “Diabetic Coma.”)

I don’t know what other mini-bar packages the hotel staff has dreamed up, but here are some suggestions:

“Bang a Gong” -- Champagne, beer, vodka, strawberries, peanuts, beer, a bong, a gong, Wild Turkey, beer and a T-Rex CD.

“Get It Done” -- Coffee, caffeine tablets, beef jerky, strawberries, a wireless Internet hookup and a recording of your boss screaming about an impending deadline.

“Get Her Drunk” -- Champagne, maraschino cherries, champagne, a bottle of Southern Comfort, strawberries, more champagne, and a Pink Floyd CD. This package is also known as the “Prom Night Special.”

“Get Some Sleep” -- A carton of milk, some chilled turkey, sleeping pills, a jug of cheap wine and a Barry Manilow CD.

“Get a Job” -- Champagne, strawberries, resumes, a phone book, want ads and a CD by The Silhouettes.

“Lose Some Weight” -- Diet Pepsi, Miller Lite, rice cakes, carrots, celery, a Richard Simmons DVD and six gallons of edible body paint.

“I’m Sorry” -- Champagne, red roses, shiny baubles, strawberries, a form letter of apology, kneepads and a Brenda Lee CD.

“The Romeo” -- Fresh flowers, scented candles, strawberries, a jug of wine, a loaf of bread, a book of sonnets and a Julio Iglesias CD.

“The Bubba” -- A six-pack of Bud, a pint of Jack Daniels, a bag of pork rinds, two EZ-Open cans of chili and a DVD of the Daytona 500.

“The Flight Attendant” -- A variety of miniature booze bottles, flimsy plastic cups with too much ice, and 47 tiny bags of pretzels.

“Weary Business Traveler” -- One large bottle of hooch and some ice. Maybe some peanuts or something.

“Family Vacation” -- Mai Tai mix, rum, sunscreen, aspirin, antacids, a hat with Mickey Mouse ears, stain remover, a Wiggles CD, earplugs and edible body paint (for the kids).

Perhaps none of these mini-bar packages will work for you. Perhaps you’d still resent paying so much for so little. Maybe cramming a small refrigerator with tiny goodies will never come close to what we all want, which is to stay home with our loved ones and our familiar surroundings and our Barry White CDs.

That’s life. Pass the strawberries.

Egging 'em on

Across America, the "morning scramble" is not a breakfast dish. It's the mad dash to get the kids out the door to school.

In a fit of blind optimism, parents start each day with the notion that everyone in the family will be on schedule, and we won't have to race around crazily at the last minute. Each school day, we hopeful parents watch those expectations dashed.

As is the case with so many things, the children hold an opposing viewpoint. The children do not care if they are late. They're not thrilled about spending the day in school anyway. They maintain that they would happily live forever as uneducated goatherds if they could be allowed to sleep for only five more minutes. Thus it begins. Every day.

Once they're up, younger children tend to wander off. Teens are too busy text-messaging their friends to actually get ready for school. Sleepy kids of any age seem to have difficulty with the question, "Where are your shoes?"

When our two sons were small, the culprit was distraction. They'd forget they were supposed to be, say, rounding up socks that weren't crunchy. Instead, I would find them watching cartoons, or barefoot in the yard with the dog. Or dressing in a ninja costume, "just to try it out," five minutes before departure to school.

And there was always a last-second disaster of some sort. I spilled my milk. I can't find my homework. The dog won't give me my shoe. We'd scramble about, solving crises, until the last possible moment, then zoom out the door, trying to reach school before the final bell, weaving through traffic like an ambulance on Saturday night.

Now that they're older, our boys require only minimal overseeing. The struggle is at the front end -- getting them out of bed -- rather than forcing breakfast down their gullets or locating their missing science project. It goes like this:

5:45 a.m.
Mom: "Good morning! Time to get up. Here comes the light! Get up!"
5:55 a.m.
Dad: "Good morning! Rise and shine there, boys!"
6 a.m.
Mom: "You guys must get up now. You're going to be late."
6:10 a.m.
Dad: "Hey, come on. What's the matter with you? Did you stay up all night?"
6:15 a.m.
Dad: "Get. Up. Now."
6:20 a.m.
Mom: "I'm coming back here in two minutes with a pitcher of ice water. Whoever's still in bed gets it."
6:30 a.m.
Boys reel around house, yawning and sniffling, wolfing food and throwing on the rags that pass for their clothes. Mom and Dad nervously hound them with questions -- "Did you brush your teeth?" or "You call that breakfast?" or "Is that the way you WANT your hair to look?" -- all the way out the door.

One day, as younger son sprinted to his room to fetch something he'd forgotten, the older one waited by the front door. A veteran of years of racing off to school, he gave his parents a wry smile and said, "We were almost on time today."

As a hopeful parent, I thought: There's always tomorrow.

Dream word

We all know what "butterfingers" means, but what could be the definition of "butterknuckles?" Is that when you slip and punch somebody?

How to get what you want at hotels

I travel a great deal for business and book tours, so I spend an awful lot of sleepless nights in hotels and motels.

(What's the difference between a hotel and a motel? A hundred bucks a night.)

I'm rarely happy with the experience. Noises keep me awake. The temperature's wrong and the room smells like feet. Your average motel mattress feels like a bag of hammers. The dark bathroom's unfamiliar and there's often a towel rack placed at just the right height to bruise my shoulder.

Do I complain? No. I expect my stay to be lousy. When I check out and the front desk clerk asks if everything was okay, I stoically mumble and nod and slump off to the airport. What's the point of complaining after the fact? No way to get that sleepless night back.

Turns out I've been doing it all wrong. The way to ensure a pleasant stay is to make demands in advance. Before you arrive, send a list of your desires so the hotel staff can scurry around and make the place feel like home.

Rock stars have known this for years. That's why their contracts carry riders that spell out, in excruciating detail, what foods and beverages will be available backstage and what they'll need in terms of accommodations, including the correct number of groupies.

We can't all be rock stars, but an online revelation shows that savvy business travelers can make precious demands, too, particularly if they're the vice president of the United States.

A website got hold of an official document called "Vice Presidential Downtime Requirements," which listed more than a dozen demands for VP Dick Cheney's hotel suites. Among them: All lights turned on, temperature set to 68 degrees, decaf coffee brewed prior to arrival, bottled water, "Diet Caffeine Free Sprite, 4 cans" and -- get this -- all televisions tuned to FOX News.

Now there's a business traveler who knows how to get what he wants. Taking a page from the Veep's book, I've created my own list of demands:

--Nonsmoking room that has been a nonsmoking room for longer than three days of airing out.

--King-sized bed. Mattress must contain no actual elbows.

--Room must be cleaned of all evidence of previous occupants, including stray hairs and toenail clippings.

--Bottled water that's not secretly $6 per swallow.

--A minibar stocked with pints rather than those tiny bottles.

--Coffeemaker and real coffee that hasn't been freeze-dried, vacuum-sealed, flash-roasted, recycled or stored in Juan Valdez's pants.

--No sirens, garbage trucks, construction vehicles, honking taxis or thundering hot rods anywhere within four square blocks of the hotel during traditional sleeping hours.

--That maid who hammers on the door and shrieks "Housekeeping!" approximately 17 times? She can't arrive before 11 a.m.

--Soft towels, not the starchy ones that peel off the first layer of skin. If I want a loofah, I'll ask for one.

--Basic toiletries, including shampoo that doesn't make one's hair staticky and standing on end all day long.

--Drunken conventioneers laughing loudly in the hallway at 2 a.m. will be shot. Unless I'm one of them.

--If a smoke alarm sounds in the night, there had better, by god, be a fire in the building. If the alarms wakes me from a sound sleep and there is no fire, I get to set one.

--Four cans of Diet Caffeine Free Sprite. Hey, if it's good enough for Dick Cheney …

--All televisions tuned to any channel except FOX News. Preferably ESPN or Comedy Central.

Groupies are optional.

Travel gives you the business

Nothing says "business trip" like a shrieking fire alarm in a motel at three o'clock in the morning.

I was reminded of this in San Francisco, where I traveled for business and several tax-deductible meals in expensive restaurants. I was in my "firm" motel bed, regularly tossing and turning so I wouldn't end up like a pizza -- lumpy on one side and absolutely flat on the other -- when the alarm went off in the hallway, just outside my room.

Smelling no smoke, I proceeded to violate all fire evacuation rules, taking time to use the bathroom and throw on some clothes, including a jacket and shoes. Made sure I had my wallet, my cell phone and other necessities. Then I helped motel employees herd the rest of the blinking guests outdoors into a refreshing light rain.

Fire trucks screamed up. Sleepy-looking firefighters checked out the building, and declared the shrieking to be a false alarm. After thirty minutes, we guests were allowed to return to our rooms, where it took mere hours to fall asleep again.

Getting no sleep in motels is an accepted fact of business trips. There's always something. If it's not a fire alarm, it's the phone trilling with a wrong number or a drunken party down the hall or an oversexed couple in the next room.

Maybe it's different for those of you who fly first-class and stay in swank, soundproof hotel rooms and have to really work to spend your substantial per diem. But for the rest of us, business travel can be one long chorus of, "Oh, how I want to go home."

Here are some of the other harsh realities of life on the road:

--You will catch a cold during your trip. Shaking all those hands. Breathing the recirculated air on commercial flights. You'll pick up a virus and bring it home to your whole family, who will not appreciate the souvenir.

--Despite your sudden illness, you will gain weight on your business trip. Too much rich food, too much high-calorie booze, not enough exercise.

--No matter how well you pay attention or how many mnemonic devices you employ, you will forget a client's name. At the worst possible moment.

--Despite the big "Hello, my name is" badge you're forced to wear, someone important will forget your name, or call you by the wrong name, or admit they've never heard of you. This will make you briefly miserable.

--You will accumulate many business cards on your trip. When you get home, you'll have no idea who's who.

--When you're on an airplane, your fellow passengers will not attempt to strike up a conversation unless you're trying to quietly read. Or sleep. Then you won't be able to shut them up, short of stuffing their mouths with the airline's tiny pillows.

--You will watch too much idiotic television in your hotel room. There's no help for it. You've got to do something while you're not sleeping all night.

--At least one of your many restaurant meals will be a real disappointment.

--Overeating will fill you with regret, among other things.

--Somewhere along the way, you'll get lost in a rental car. Just long enough to make you late.

--You'll arrive at an appointment only to find that the people there had no idea you were coming, and no record of your company.

--You will miss your family, while discovering anew how annoying other people can be.
Particularly those who set off fire alarms.

There's a reason for these harsh realities. They make you happy for the business trip to end.

Repeat after me: "There's no place like home. There's no place like home."

Generation Zzzzz

Late on a recent Saturday morning, I was working away in my home office when my teen-aged son appeared in the doorway, fresh from bed, enjoying a langorous stretch-and-yawn.

"That," he said, "was possibly the best 13 hours of sleep I've ever had."

I was so jealous, I wanted to pinch him.

Thirteen hours! Are you kidding me? The only way I could sleep for 13 hours straight would be under the influence of a) a powerful sedative or b) the flu.

Not that I wouldn't like to sleep 13 hours in a row. Nothing would make me happier. But there's no way I could do it, not at my age.

The Generation Gap largely can be explained in terms of our approaches to sleep.

When you're young, you never want to go to bed (you might miss something fun). Once you do turn in, you never want to get up again, and parents sometimes are forced to resort to extreme methods (such as ice water or firecrackers) to rouse you in time for school.

Once we get to be a "certain age," we can't wait to go to bed at night. We're so tired all the time, so frazzled and run down, bed seems like a reward for surviving another day. Once we're there, though, we often can't stay asleep. Our children, our worries, our bladders wake us up during the night. Next thing you know, it's morning and we don't feel well-rested at all.

We then must go wake our blissfully sleeping children, damn them, even though we're much too tired to break out the morning firecrackers.

Yes, I'm speaking in generalities here. I'm sure there are adults out there who can sleep all day long when they feel like it. They're probably people who have clear consciences and enormous bladders. Most of all, they're probably people who don't have children.

(For years, I secretly blamed our two sons for my poor sleep habits. I was doing fine, I always said, until those years when we had babies in the house. Then, two o'clock feedings and midnight colic disrupted my sleep, and I never fully recovered. Meanwhile, these boys can sleep around the clock, silently mocking my fatigue. It's just not fair.)

Now, science has found another reason for the disparity in sleep habits: Adulthood itself.

Adulthood begins when people stop sleeping in, according to researchers at the University of Munich, quoted in the magazine "Science." The researchers studied the sleeping patterns of more than 25,000 people in Switzerland and Germany, finding each person's "chronotype," which they identified as the midpoint between going to bed and waking up on days when the subjects could sleep as late as they wanted.

The researchers found that the average chronotype moved later and later during the teen years, then shifted back steadily, earlier and earlier, after the age of 20. The scientists were unable to determine whether this was a result of biology or "partying," but the pattern was indisputable.

So listen, parents: Don't resent your teens' ability to sleep all day. They don't mean to show off; they probably can't help it. When they reach adulthood, their patterns will change, and they, too, will be up at the crack of dawn, worrying and yawning and demanding urgent entry to the bathroom.

Until then, there are always firecrackers.

Waking dead

Here's a statement you rarely hear a young person make: "I slept wrong."

The average college kid can pass out at 3 a.m., sprawled over a beer keg, naked, one leg bent at a 120-degree angle, both arms tucked firmly under his back, and his nose packed full of shaving cream that's slowly hardening into concrete. He'll bounce up from this night of hazing and raucous behavior, after snoozing for 12 straight hours, and he'll be fresh as a daisy. Ask him how he slept, and he'll say, "Great!"

"Sleeping wrong" is the province of us older folks, the ones in middle age and beyond. I can turn in for the night at 9 p.m., spend the next eight hours in perfect sleeping conditions, and still wake up looking and moving like the Elephant Man.

I stumble into the kitchen, desperate for coffee, all my joints creaking, my body wracked by mysterious pains, my hair plastered into a rooster's comb, and the conversation goes like this:

Wife: "My God, what happened to you?"

Me: "I slept wrong."

The paradox here is that those of us who are older have had much more practice at sleeping. Years and years of it. We should be darned good at it by now. But, once in a while, we "sleep wrong" anyway, and we awaken to find the evidence. Aches and pains. One leg suddenly shorter than the other. One whole side of the body flattened like the bottom of a Hershey's Kiss.

We need the sleep more than youngsters do. Dozens of studies have shown that American adults go around sleep-deprived all the time. We're too busy to spend enough time in bed. And, once we're there, worries and physical ailments and nightmares and snoring interfere with proper rest. Add in the occasional night of "sleeping wrong" and it's no wonder we're a nation of zombies.

I expect sleep-deprivation to soon become a popular defense strategy in court, right up there with insanity.

Judge: "Sir, you mowed down 17 people with your car before whamming into a light pole. Officers on the scene said you were babbling, unable to control your bodily functions and your hair looked funny. How do you plead?"

Defendant: "I slept wrong."

Judge: "Oh. OK, you're free to go. Try to get some rest."

Sadly, scientists report that sleep problems get worse the older you get. Each passing year makes correct sleeping more difficult. By the time you're in your 80s, there's no point even going to bed.

We in middle age do everything we can to avoid "sleeping wrong." We buy the most comfortable beds, set the household temperature just right, block out all light and noise, try to erase troubling thoughts from our minds. But somewhere along the way, we make a mistake. And, having "slept wrong," we spend all day trying to recuperate and fervently praying that the next night will go better.

Young people, on the other hand, can sleep most anywhere, anytime, including during classes, underwater or while standing up. It's just not fair.

When my sons were younger, they would sometimes sleep on the rock-hard floor "for fun." They'd build a nest of blankets and linens, splay out over some randomly placed pillows, and get a wonderful night of sleep. I think they were showing off.

When I'd find them sleeping peacefully on the floor, I was so envious I was tempted to wake them in some vicious way -- banging pans together like cymbals, ice water, a swift kick.

Child abuse, you say? No problem. I'd just tell the judge, "I slept wrong."

Galloping through hotels

A note to all you business travelers who spend half your lives in hotels: I don't know how you survive it.

Granted, as a work-at-home type, it's hard for me to relate to you who hop from city to city in pursuit of the almighty dollar. Most days, the farthest I travel is out to the driveway to pick up the newspaper. So maybe it's just me -- I'm not accustomed to life on the road. But I've traveled a lot in recent years on book tours, etc., and I don't see how anyone ever adjusts to night after night in strange beds.

Whether it's a five-star hotel or a cheap roadside motor inn, renting a place to spend the night always comes with problems. Everything's unfamiliar. You're far away from all your usual stuff. Every "amenity" in a hotel room reminds you that you're not in the one place where you'd really like to be -- home.

Hotels beds are too hard or too soft, compared to your usual bed, and the sheets never stay on right. The coffeemaker's tiny. All the light switches are in the wrong places. Something's making a buzzing noise. The soap smells weird. The towel rack is perfectly placed for bruising your shoulder every time you turn around in the bathroom.

Just when you've mastered the learning curve of a new room, have figured out which switches operate which lamps, it's time to move to another city and start all over again.

My main problem with hotels is that I can't sleep in them anymore. Since the whole idea of a hotel room is to provide a temporary place to sleep, insomnia more or less defeats the purpose. If I'm going to be awake all night anyway, why spend money on a hotel? I could've stayed at the airport.

Not only can I not get comfortable in hotel beds, there are all those unfamiliar noises. The air conditioner sounds like a jet engine. Drunken revelers are partying in the hall. The people next door apparently smuggled in a horse and are riding it around the room, whooping.

(I recently stayed in a kitchenette suite, where I was awakened every hour by the KA-CHUNK of the icemaker. No sleep, but more ice than Antarctica. I could've counted ice cubes rather than sheep.)

There's not a lot to do in a hotel when you're wide awake at 3 a.m. -- unless you're in Las Vegas.
If sleep's out of the question, then a hotel room becomes simply a place to wait for the next appointment. By yourself.

Solitude and strange surroundings and spare time conspire to breed bad habits. Pretty soon, I'm sitting around in my underwear, watching endless hours of idiotic TV, scratching and burping, snacking too much and drinking alcohol from tiny airline bottles.

I use way more towels than I would at home, then throw them on the floor, knowing the maid will pick them up. Spend too much time in front of the fluorescent-lit mirror, sighing over gray hair and wrinkles. I start thinking: What this hotel room really needs is a horse . . .

Then it's daylight again, time to pack up and move to the next city, the next business appointment, the next hotel.

Until the trip's over and I can go home. And finally get some rest.

Fazed by phases

Otherwise sane adults enter parenthood feeling they can manage the child, that they can shape that newborn bundle of protoplasm into a functional adult who will bring good to the world.

Soon, however, sleep-deprived parents recognize that babies are around-the-clock need machines who bring into the world only one thing: dirty diapers. And it just goes downhill from there.

The central problem of parenthood is that the child's needs and expectations often are in direct conflict with the needs and expectations of the parents. For instance, a toddler expects life to be full of fun and freedom and adventure; the parents expect the child to stop sticking his tongue to electrical sockets.

Many such conflicts occur because parents don't understand the Stages of Child Development. As children grow, they go through "phases" in which certain behaviors are exhibited. Parents will find each of these "phases" to be "weird," but wise parents know that, if they just wait the child out, soon the aberrant behavior will be replaced by something even weirder.

Let's look, then, at the Stages of Child Development. For simplicity's sake, we'll break down childhood into the following categories: Infants, Toddlers, those of elementary school age (hereinafter known as "Kids"), and Teens. Each of these general age groups display certain universal behavioral traits, though individual deviations are common. Your mileage may vary.

Question: What do children want most from parents?

Infants: Around-the-clock attention.
Toddlers: A chance to get away with something.
Kids: A ride somewhere.
Teens: Money.

Question: What will interest the child most at various stages?

Infants: Mom's face.
Toddlers: Electrical sockets.
Kids: Armpit noises.
Teens: The opposite sex.

Question: Children tend to insert things in their mouths. What items are most typical?

Infants: Toe.
Toddlers: Everything.
Kids: Candy.
Teens: Foot.

Question: What are children's methods of communicating their needs?

Infants: Crying.
Toddlers: Crying.
Kids: Crying.
Teens: Sullen silence.

Question: What are children's favorite modes of transportation?

Infants: Mom's arms.
Toddlers: Dad's shoulders.
Kids: Anything that has wheels and an element of danger.
Teens: Their own car, dammit.

Question: What's the favorite form of amusement at each stage?

Infants: A mobile over the crib.
Toddlers: Inane television shows.
Kids: Setting small fires.
Teens: Talking on the phone 24 hours a day.

Question: How do children regard normal bodily functions?

Infant: Fascinating.
Toddler: As topics for public conversation.
Kids: Hilarious.
Teens: "God, you're so embarrassing! Can't you just leave me alone?"

Question: What clothing options are suitable for a child at each stage?

Infant: Six billion diapers.
Toddler: Armor.
Kids: Anything the parents didn't pick out.
Teens: The same stupid bellbottoms you wore when you were a teen.

Question: What philosophical questions are indicative of each stage?

Infants: Who am I?
Toddlers: Can I eat it?
Kids: Why not?
Teens: Can't a person get any privacy around here?

Question: What patterns of disturbing behavior can parents expect?

Infants: Shrieking at 2 a.m.
Toddlers: Throwing up at 2 a.m.
Kids: Raiding the fridge at 2 a.m.
Teens: Needing bail at 2 a.m.

Question: What are the typical ambitions of a child at each stage?

Infants: To become toddlers.
Toddlers: To escape their parents' control.
Kids: To someday drive a car.
Teens: To escape their parents' control.

Question: What are the biggest challenges for the parent at each stage of the child's development?

Infants: Sleep deprivation.
Toddlers: Ensuring a safe environment.
Kids: Public embarrassment.
Teens: Controlling homicidal impulses.

Now that you have a firm understanding of the Stages of Child Development, you can be better parents. Remember: Each of these stages is merely a passing phase and, eventually, the children will grow up and move away.

And then, finally, you can get some sleep.

In your dreams

Dream interpretation has become a popular and lucrative business, so today The Home Front -- in a blatant attempt to tear off a piece of that action -- features "Ask Dr. Dreamweaver," an informative guide to your dreams, nightmares and other nocturnal admissions.

Dear Dr. Dreamweaver: I often have vivid nightmares in which spooky wraiths appear out of rain clouds and offer me Starbucks coffee. I'm concerned because these dreams keep me awake at night. Signed, Sleepless in Seattle.

Dear Sleepless: Your subconscious is telling you it's time to move to a drier climate. And, you should lay off the caffeine.

Dear Dr. Dreamweaver: I'm a mother of three small children. Recently, I dreamed they all were sitting around the kitchen table, chewing on my purse. Please explain. Signed, Nervous in Nantucket.

Dear Nervous: Your signature is apt because this is what we professionals call an "anxiety dream." You're anxious about how much it costs to raise your children, and that manifests in this dream in which they're gobbling up your purse. These dreams are nothing to worry about, though they do tend to recur. As your children get older, particularly as they approach college age, you may find they're chewing up your 401(k) as well.

Dear Dr. Dreamweaver: I work in a large office. Recently, I've had several dreams where the walls of my cubicle are closing in on me. These dreams are very frightening, and I wake up in a sweat. Is my subconscious trying to tell me something? Signed, Claustrophobic in Columbus.

Dear Claustrophobic: Dreams often illuminate stresses from our daily lives. Your cubicle dream indicates you feel pressured and alone in your job. The company may be growing, and you fear you'll be squeezed out by new employees who are younger, more ambitious and better-looking than you. Your subconscious is telling you it's time to update your resume.

Dear Dr. Dreamweaver: I recently dreamed I was in a Chinese restaurant, ordering pork dumplings, when I got into an argument with the knife-wielding chef because I insisted on paying him in Oreos. Does this mean I'm crazy? Signed, Alarmed in Albuquerque.

Dear Alarmed: Yes.

Dear Dr. Dreamweaver: I often have wonderful dreams in which I'm no longer a computer nerd. Instead, I'm a rock star, surrounded by beautiful, adoring women. Could this mean I should take up the guitar? Signed, Lonely in Los Angeles.

Dear Lonely: In your dreams.

Dear Dr. Dreamweaver: I often dream that I'm taking the final exam in a college class. Usually, it's a class I've forgotten to attend the entire semester, and I know none of the answers on the quiz. This seems unusual to me, since I never attended college. Signed, Stumped in St. Louis.

Dear Stumped: These dreams are very common, indicating anxiety in your waking life. There's nothing to be done for them. Just be glad that you, unlike so many who have this dream, aren't taking the test in the nude.

Dear Dr. Dreamweaver: I often dream that I'm falling. I know that's not unusual, but in my dreams, I'm naked and plunging toward a large vat of creamed corn. What could this mean? Signed, Plummeting in Poughkeepsie.

Dear Plummeting: Dreams of falling often indicate a life that's unfulfilled or out of control. In your case, these dreams indicate you need to change careers. Look for something in professional wrestling or the adult entertainment industry.

Dear Dr. Dreamweaver: I have a recurring nightmare in which I'm surrounded by snakes. Snakes, snakes, everywhere. In the distance, there's a tall white monolith with a pointed top. What could this mean? Signed, Disturbed in D.C.

Dear Disturbed: A strict Freudian analysis of these dreams would uncover sexual connotations of various stripes, but the explanation is actually quite simple. Dr. Dreamweaver sees from your postmark that you live in Washington, where Congress is back in session. 'Nuff said.

Bedtime for bozos

Here's the scene: It's 9:30 p.m. and our then-grade-school-aged sons are supposed to be in bed in their rooms at opposite ends of our rambling house. "Lights out" was 30 minutes ago. I've walked to their respective rooms at least four times already, ordering the exuberant young'uns to be quiet and go to sleep.

I hear the harump-thump of little feet. Really irritated now, I stalk to the farthest bedroom and shout into the dark: "What's that noise? Who's up out of bed?"

The nine-year-old answers in a tiny voice: "It was just me. I was jumping around because I'm happy."

Dad: "Don't be happy! Go to sleep!"

Son: (Hysterical laughter.)

Dad: (Heavy sigh.)

I don't care how many parenting manuals you read, you're never going to find any advice suggesting you tell your child "don't be happy." Making them happy is a big part of a parent's job. Granted, I'd been (repeatedly) provoked, but I'm pretty sure shouting "don't be happy" at my child means I don't get my Parenting merit badge.

I'm glad my son is happy. Really. I just don't understand why he has to be so danged happy at bedtime.

Bedtime is a battle of wills in most households. Kids don't want to go to bed. Ever. They're afraid they'll miss something. They're busy trying to soak up the entire world and sleep seems a waste of valuable time.

This position runs exactly counter to the way parents feel. You don't often hear a parent say, "No sleep for me, thanks. I want to stay up late." Veteran parents know you get all the sleep you can, whenever you can. Eight p.m. on a Saturday night, when the rest of the world is partying, parents are thinking, "Bed sounds pretty good about now."

But we parents can't go to sleep until the children do. If we nod off while they're still romping around, we'll likely awaken to the shriek of a smoke alarm.

So it's a waiting game. Cranky, yawning parents demanding that children fall asleep. Children clowning around or giggling in the dark or reading by flashlight. More grumbled demands. More giggling. Heavy sighs.

Before you know it, it's morning. And the kids are saying, "Dad, why are you so grumpy? Did you get up on the wrong side of the bed?" And Dad grinds his teeth down to the gums.

The Battle of Bedtime is symptomatic of the whole relationship between parent and child. As parents, we must inflict our will on the offspring. We want them to go to sleep/eat their vegetables/clean their rooms/brush their teeth/feed the dog/grow up to be responsible citizens. We have a full agenda for their lives and we'll cajole and wheedle and threaten and yell and stomp around to get our way.

Problems arise because children have an agenda of their own: They want to play. As far as they are concerned, everything else -- including a good night's sleep -- is an interruption. And all that yelling by the parents? It's background noise. To them, parents' voices are like static on the radio. An annoyance, but you soon learn to tune it out and go about your business.

Kids are into immediate gratification in a big way. Threats of future harm don't faze them. You can say you will take away tomorrow's TV privileges. You can say you'll ground them for a week. You can threaten them with anything, up to and including the withholding of food. They won't care. That's TOMORROW. And they only care about tonight's gratification, which includes trampoline acrobatics on the bed.

I told this same nine-year-old that we'd go to a matinee if he'd clean his room. He whined. I said, "Look, think of it as a carrot, not a stick. I'm not punishing you by making you clean your room. I'm offering you a reward for doing what I asked."

He thought this over, then said, "So it's a bribe!"

I sighed and said, "That's right, son."

He said, "Okay, then."

Once we'd established that, he made a half-hearted effort at cleaning his room. I caved in and took him to the movie.

I think the matinee made him happy, but I'm not sure. I slept through it.

Dream on

Sleep deprivation is a serious societal ill, and I'd like to write an informed, persuasive column about it, but frankly I'm too tired to do the research.

I know I've read articles about sleep deprivation, how it causes traffic accidents and irritability and low productivity. The articles are here somewhere, in this landfill I call my office, but I'm too drowsy to hunt for them.

Let's just say it's a given: Most of us get too little sleep.

We work long hours. We have many worries. Our kids get sick (always, always in the middle of the night). We cut back on sleep to squeeze in leisure activities or visit the gym or start a second career. And we shuffle around all day like zombies, our eyelids heavy, our bodies weary, our brains filled with pudding.

It's become a point of pride in our culture to keep going on little sleep. People brag about giving up sleep so they can be more successful. They're getting ahead because they're busily toiling while their competitors snooze.

Profiles of business and political leaders always mention how the dynamos work 18 hours a day and sleep only three hours a night. (Which explains a lot about the bad decisions those business and political leaders make.)

The message is: They're too busy pursuing their dreams to waste time on actual dreaming.

For those of us with home offices, the temptation to work instead of sleep is particularly keen. The work's right there, handy, calling to us. We lie in bed, our thoughts unreeling toward sleep, and we get an idea. Or, at least, an inkling that might be a good idea in the light of day. We drag ourselves out of bed and tiptoe to the computer, just to write it down, so we'll remember to pursue it later. Next thing you know, it's sunrise.

I've been a lousy sleeper my whole life. I was one of those kids who read with the flashlight under the covers. For years, through my teens and twenties, I had trouble nodding off at night, so I filled those sleepless hours with more productive activities, such as partying.

Now that I'm middle-aged, I don't have any trouble falling asleep. In fact, I often have trouble staying awake. Most nights, the 10 p.m. newscasters are wasting their breaths. By then, I'm slumped on the sofa with my mouth hanging open.

My problem is that I can't STAY asleep. I'll saw those logs for a few hours, but then something -- the dog, a dreaming child, a distant siren, my own insanity -- will awaken me.
It'll be, say, 3 a.m., the most absolutely wrong time a person can be awake, coming at it from either direction. And I'm lying there, feeling like the only guy in America who's wide awake. I burrow back into the covers, desperate to squeeze in a few more hours. I toss, I turn. I'm too hot, but my feet are cold. I can't stop thinking about that stupid thing I said the other day. Toss, turn. I've got to get busy tomorrow and make that deadline. And the kids are going to the dentist. Can't forget that. Toss, turn. Is the furnace making a funny noise?

My brain has started its day, whether my body likes it or not. And there's always work I could be doing. I might as well get up.

So I arise and get busy. And I go around sleepy and grumpy and dopey all day, making mistakes and bumping into furniture and saying something stupid that can become my new obsession the next time I'm lying awake.

So far, this pattern hasn't made me a dynamo.

If anything, I'm so sleepy all the time that my waking and dream worlds collide. I dream about work. I fall asleep at my desk. I get mixed up about whether somebody actually told me something or I just dreamed it. Whole days seem like nightmares.

I fully expect to wake up someday and find myself faced with the final exam in a college course I've never attended. Naked.

Then all my dreams will have come true. And maybe I can get some sleep.