Nina In New York: You Can Sleep When You're Dead

A lighthearted look at news, events, culture and everyday life in New York. The opinions expressed are solely those of the writer.
______________

By Nina Pajak

If you are like me and pretty much everyone between the ages of 25 and 80, you are probably sleep deprived. And assuming you are not one of those well-rested freaks who I assume exfoliate regularly and lie upon piles of satin-sheathed pillows, you are well aware of the damage you are self-inflicting. Our sub-eight hour a night habit leads to weight gain and memory loss and heart disease and psychosis and aphasia and tooth decay and spontaneous limb detachment and nostrilitis and tennis elbow and Groats Disease and eyeball dystocia, to name a few.

Basically, we're falling apart while our sleeping beauty counterparts sit (asleep) on their high horses with their even-keel attitudes and unbaggy eyes and consistent skin care regimens, boasting of how much better they feel since they switched from coffee to hot water with lemon. Like anyone who needs coffee could get by on hot water and lemon! Stop it. Get out of here with that garbage.

Anyway, a tiny slice of redemption belongs to us! We, the tribe of exhausted, fat, stuttering, sedentary, forgetful basket cases, are finally on the healthy end of the equation. As it turns out, getting more than eight hours of sleep a night was found to correspond to a higher risk of stroke in older people. Boo ya. Bam! Do people still say either of those things? Yolo. Fleek? I give up and resign myself to '90s and early 2000s slang forever hence. Phew, that's a relief. Up high, dude.

There are a couple footnotes here, namely that it's possible the extra sleep isn't so much a cause as it is a symptom of being headed for a stroke. Whatever. I'm taking it. We never get to feel good about our lifestyle! And on top of that, our lifestyle doesn't feel good. So this is the least we need, in addition to one of those mugs of coffee that's actually a soup bowl, refills included. Finally, a little support. A little encouragement. A vote in our favor.

The zombie apocalypse is nigh.

Nina Pajak is a writer living with her husband, daughter and dog in Queens. Connect with Nina on Twitter!