Sleep depraved

My friends Jerry and Dan were hanging out in my cube at work one day a couple of weeks ago, and Dan's major contribution to the conversation was some aimless babbling, followed by a yawn. Jerry's major contribution?:

"Dan, you seem sleep-depraved."

That cracked me right up. I knew he meant "sleep depr-I-ved," but the flub was too good to go unremarked. It held a hallowed place on my whiteboard until just recently when I had to replace it with a draft of a workflow diagram. (Not nearly as interesting, but it is a work whiteboard.)

We spun off into sleep-depravity jokes, most of which involved hatchets and drooling on oneself and that sort of thing. But when I got to thinking about it, sleep depravity is nothing new. Take fiction and film.




From the 1880s, we have Edgar Allen Poe's short story, "The Telltale Heart," where a murderer is kept awake at night by the beating of his victim's heart from under the floorboards of his bedroom. The probable stench factor aside, the idea of slipping a dead body under the floor in my bedroom seems a bit short-sighted. I mean, we all fear something coming at us in the dark from under our beds, right? OK, fine. So you don't but I do!

In Fight Club, a bad bout of insomnia leads Edward Norton's character to befriend a mysterious and violent character, played by Brad Pitt. All the more disturbing because of Pitt's origins. Sleep depravity + pugilistic psychosis. Unraveling that one took a little more than a nap. And several good beatings. Talk about hiding from yourself!

The Machinist takes a character who is suddenly stalked by a strange man at work, dates a waitress who precipitates a bizarre series of flashbacks, and ultimately has himself run over in an effort to track down his stalker. Who turns out to be more than a stalker. Sort of a Fight Club twist, but with a very relieved victim at the end, who is finally able to get some good rest.

In Insomnia, with Al Pacino, Robin Williams, and Hilary Swank, a detective slowly becomes "unhinged" by insomnia while trying to solve a murder in Alaska, during the Long Day. Sleep depravity is not optimal for furthering -- or even maintaining -- one's career.


And, of course, Jack Nicholson in The Shining. "Heeeeere's Johnny!" Need I say more? (Of course, there was a bit of haunted-house depravity at play there, too.)

I've been suffering from a bit of sleep depravity, myself, lately. I don't have a landlord to murder, soap in my briefcase, a hit-and-run on my record, an ax to grind, or a visit to Alaska planned anytime soon. I am, however, crabby, unpredictable, and scattered in my thinking. 


So, while "depravity" is a relative term, no one around me goes completely unaffected.