Everyone I speak to lately is learning how I’ve resolved my long-time sleep problems. I relate in detail about my CPAP machine—short for Continuous Positive Airway Pressure. I explain how sleep apnea closes the airway in the back of one’s throat. And I hold forth about how often the apnea was waking me up before I began to strap a snorkel-like mask to my face at bedtime, and how it hardly does now. The best part of these conversations: My CPAP’s benefits seem to be contagious. By the time I’m done, I’ve solved my listeners’ sleep problems, too.
You don’t need sleep issues, though, to agree that some nights you can just forget about getting some rest. Apnea sufferers keep score by the Apnea/Hypopnea Index, or AHI, which averages out how many times per hour they stop breathing and briefly awaken. Knowing your AHI is dandy if you’ve got apnea. But the many people who have trouble sleeping without any apnea should be allowed to keep score, too. After some careful thought, I’ve apparently caught the sleep-medicine community snoozing, for I’ve come up with sleep scores for everyone else.
DBI. If you have a dog, chances are you were a sucker for those doleful eyes from the first and only time they pleaded with you to say, “Come on up, boy.” And having allowed it once while the dog was 12 pounds, you now have an 80-pound anchor with bad breath and gas sandwiched between you and your spouse. The DBI, for Dog Breath Index, is how often per hour you come face-to-face with Rex and wake up from a royal blast of halitosis.
HCI. You don’t need a pet to keep track of your HCI: You just need to live with someone. Family members talk about all sorts of things in the course of the day, and if they’re all equally committed to good sleep, late-night conversation stays light. But if you think family life is that easy, you’re dreaming. The Heavy Conversation Index (HCI) measures how many of the first hours of bedtime you’re staring at the ceiling because one of you brought up something that couldn’t wait till morning, such as life, the universe and everything.
SDI. Most common in October’s run-up to Halloween, the Scary Dream Index (SDI) tracks how many times during the night you wake up in a cold sweat because you’re being chased by vampires, zombies, or something original plumbed from the depths of your very soul. If something’s after you, you’re not asleep and it’s not tax season, never mind trying to keep score…you won’t be sleeping anyway.
FIFI. Some adults, we hear, toss and turn in their nightlong quest to find that perfect sleep position. Unfortunately, that prime spot could mean the other person in the bed is out of luck. The Foot in Face Index (FIFI) counts how many times per night one sleep partner’s rotation in the bed means the other wakes up with toes up her nostrils.
PDII. Occurring for a few months every four years, the PDI might be the most pervasive. (It’s like MLBI, a score related to watching too much late-night baseball, but on steroids.) Whatever else you plan to do the night of a political debate, chances are that you’ll still end up in front of the TV and stay there till it’s over. Just try to fall asleep then. The PDII, for Post-Debate Incredulity Index, measures how many times you wake up from sleep, fists clenched, over something this one or that one said. Or should have said. Either way, just remember that you elected to watch the thing.
With only one score to keep, which the CPAP machine calculates for me, I’m sleeping just fine these days. Or at least I was sleeping. After years of needing to fall asleep using the traditional SCI (Sheep Counted Index), I now have myriad sheep grazing on the property with nothing to do. Some friends of ours wouldn’t sleep till they’d contacted the nearest government agency. They’d ensure that every member of the herd was counted—and would feel proud that it still mattered in the world.
Me? I lie awake, wondering where on earth we could ever find enough mint jelly.
Showing posts with label baseball. Show all posts
Showing posts with label baseball. Show all posts
Monday, October 17, 2016
Saturday, April 10, 2010
C’mon, team, sometimes it is whether you win or lose
Elena handed me the phone, anticipating the look she was about to see on my face. “It’s Eric,” she said, “from the Mets.”
Ever since I first bought four tickets online to a Met game, several years ago, Eric has been calling once a year. A call from Eric, soon after opening day, has become as much a part of spring as the rains, the first dandelions and the mosquitoes. But until now, the answering machine had always done its duty by taking the call.
Eric didn’t hear what he wanted to hear in answer to his question, that I was ready, able and willing to spend up to $29,950 for a season ticket . Or at least a multi-game pack. He couldn’t even be sure, in fact, that I was going to attend a game at Citi Field this year at all. What kind of Met fan, he likely wondered, was I?
It’s a fair question, and a familiar one. Probably before Eric was born, I was rooting for the Mets. I grew up down the long block from Shea along Roosevelt Avenue, the one that crossed Flushing Creek, fetid in the stretch where it made a few last bends before Flushing Bay and LaGuardia Airport. Our building was close enough for us to hear the cheers from every good play, let alone the Beatles, The Who and other bands that performed at Shea. Without me, my Mom might never have gotten to watch the Mets on TV. “Turn the antenna left—no, right—now back—a little more. Now stand right there—don’t let go!” I remember my Mom’s grin as she’d say that last part.
I paid attention from their first World Series win in 1969. I went a few times a year with my next-door friend Anton or best-friend Jack with tickets we’d get from saving milk-carton coupons. I kept track through my mid-teen years, after which I seldom watched other than the play. (Fishing and girls took precedence, in that order.) The exception was during the 1986 World Series—a year after I married my girl—when the Mets’ Mookie Wilson shot a grounder through Red Sock Bill Buckner’s legs.
If all my fandom dated back to the ‛80s, I wouldn’t be having this discussion with myself. I’ve better topics if I were going to do that. But once the kids got old enough to care about baseball, Elena’s suppressed Yankee roots also resurfaced. And all three of them began accusing me of not being a fan: What kind of Met fan are you? So…I got back into the game for, oh, about as many years as I did in the ‛70s. I can’t blame fishing or romance this time. But I could blame my team. It's what Met fans, after all, do best.
This is the team whose fans, during the opening-day pre-game ceremony, booed the trainers. Its best players spend much of every season on the disabled list, and even if I studied the roster closely every day, invariably some player would come up to pitch or bat and I’d say, “Who the heck is this?” Donna, a colleague of mine down the hall, gave an analogy that went something like this: Imagine spending hundreds for your family to go to a Broadway play, only to learn that understudies were in the top roles. And for a role or two, they had nobody. (I suppose they went to the nearest restaurant and snatched up the first waiter they saw.) And she has a weekend season ticket.
Gian, with whom I work, takes a bleaker view of the sport in a recent Facebook post. “It all ended in 1993, with the Worst Team Money Could Buy.” He then describes the Mets as mostly “a kind of bizarro simulacrum of a once-proud franchise, kind of like the Knicks.” I don’t know about the Knicks. I don’t know about 1993 other that it was when my son, Andrew, came into this world. And I will never, ever know how to pronounce or use “simulacrum.”
What I do know, at least, is that I’m some kind of fan of David, Jose, Carlos and the gang. If I’m thinking of baseball at all, I’m wondering about how they did. And no matter who’s on the team, who gets traded (and however idiotically), who should get fired but doesn’t, I’m a fan. I never could play the game well, but plenty of people do. And when the game is going well—never mind that they’re coddled millionaires on HGH—it’s a joy to watch.
That “if” about thinking of baseball? Sure, It’s a mighty big if. I suppose I could have responded to Eric’s question about buying season tickets with an offer of my own, considering my team’s already under-.500 record. I could even have conjured up a good New Yawk accent worthy of the Mets’ Brooklyn Dodgers roots: “What’s it woith t’ya?”
Ever since I first bought four tickets online to a Met game, several years ago, Eric has been calling once a year. A call from Eric, soon after opening day, has become as much a part of spring as the rains, the first dandelions and the mosquitoes. But until now, the answering machine had always done its duty by taking the call.
Eric didn’t hear what he wanted to hear in answer to his question, that I was ready, able and willing to spend up to $29,950 for a season ticket . Or at least a multi-game pack. He couldn’t even be sure, in fact, that I was going to attend a game at Citi Field this year at all. What kind of Met fan, he likely wondered, was I?
It’s a fair question, and a familiar one. Probably before Eric was born, I was rooting for the Mets. I grew up down the long block from Shea along Roosevelt Avenue, the one that crossed Flushing Creek, fetid in the stretch where it made a few last bends before Flushing Bay and LaGuardia Airport. Our building was close enough for us to hear the cheers from every good play, let alone the Beatles, The Who and other bands that performed at Shea. Without me, my Mom might never have gotten to watch the Mets on TV. “Turn the antenna left—no, right—now back—a little more. Now stand right there—don’t let go!” I remember my Mom’s grin as she’d say that last part.
I paid attention from their first World Series win in 1969. I went a few times a year with my next-door friend Anton or best-friend Jack with tickets we’d get from saving milk-carton coupons. I kept track through my mid-teen years, after which I seldom watched other than the play. (Fishing and girls took precedence, in that order.) The exception was during the 1986 World Series—a year after I married my girl—when the Mets’ Mookie Wilson shot a grounder through Red Sock Bill Buckner’s legs.
If all my fandom dated back to the ‛80s, I wouldn’t be having this discussion with myself. I’ve better topics if I were going to do that. But once the kids got old enough to care about baseball, Elena’s suppressed Yankee roots also resurfaced. And all three of them began accusing me of not being a fan: What kind of Met fan are you? So…I got back into the game for, oh, about as many years as I did in the ‛70s. I can’t blame fishing or romance this time. But I could blame my team. It's what Met fans, after all, do best.
This is the team whose fans, during the opening-day pre-game ceremony, booed the trainers. Its best players spend much of every season on the disabled list, and even if I studied the roster closely every day, invariably some player would come up to pitch or bat and I’d say, “Who the heck is this?” Donna, a colleague of mine down the hall, gave an analogy that went something like this: Imagine spending hundreds for your family to go to a Broadway play, only to learn that understudies were in the top roles. And for a role or two, they had nobody. (I suppose they went to the nearest restaurant and snatched up the first waiter they saw.) And she has a weekend season ticket.
Gian, with whom I work, takes a bleaker view of the sport in a recent Facebook post. “It all ended in 1993, with the Worst Team Money Could Buy.” He then describes the Mets as mostly “a kind of bizarro simulacrum of a once-proud franchise, kind of like the Knicks.” I don’t know about the Knicks. I don’t know about 1993 other that it was when my son, Andrew, came into this world. And I will never, ever know how to pronounce or use “simulacrum.”
What I do know, at least, is that I’m some kind of fan of David, Jose, Carlos and the gang. If I’m thinking of baseball at all, I’m wondering about how they did. And no matter who’s on the team, who gets traded (and however idiotically), who should get fired but doesn’t, I’m a fan. I never could play the game well, but plenty of people do. And when the game is going well—never mind that they’re coddled millionaires on HGH—it’s a joy to watch.
That “if” about thinking of baseball? Sure, It’s a mighty big if. I suppose I could have responded to Eric’s question about buying season tickets with an offer of my own, considering my team’s already under-.500 record. I could even have conjured up a good New Yawk accent worthy of the Mets’ Brooklyn Dodgers roots: “What’s it woith t’ya?”
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